Sony’s New Technology Would Adapt Game Difficulty to a Player’s Skill Level::Sony’s New Technology Would Adapt Game Difficulty to a Player’s Skill Level: The company filed a patent for the skill-based algorithm.

  • ben@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    Maybe the article is being vague but stuff like this really doesn’t seem like it should be patented. Especially considering I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this done in games before. The simplest being Mario games giving you invincibility in a level after you die a set amount of times. Or I think A Hat in Time would shorten certain boss battle segments after you completed them already.

    The implementation here would need to be really new and impressive to justify this being a patent. And I’m guessing it won’t be, assuming they ever actually do something with it.

    • DragonOracleIX
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      11 months ago

      There are examples of subtle difficulty shifts too, such as RE4. The game will spawn more/less enemies and change drop rates based on player performance.

    • pastaPersona@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Reminds me of some other cool game mechanics that have been patented/copyrighted leading to games as a whole losing out on fantastic ideas. The nemesis system from the Shadow of Mordor games / loading screen minigames come to mind.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They will have a very difficult time with prior art, especially given there’s been literal articles about L4D’s dynamic difficulty adjustments to pace the game with the ‘director.’

      There’s a number of games with dynamic difficulty adjustments, so the scope for this to be successfully defended would need to be quite narrow.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      Or even more in your face directly from nintendo: in mario kart (like all of them) you get a banana or green shell if you’re in 1st and things like blue shells and flying chain chomps if you’re in last. The worse you do, the better your items get.