Nintendo Patents Insanity

theodp writes "Nintendo scored a patent Tuesday for a Sanity system for video game, which covers causing a game character to hallucinate - e.g., see bleeding walls and hear maniacal laughter - as its sanity decreases in response to encountering a creature or gruesome situation."

Comments

Call of Cthulhu ?

[morcego]

I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[lilmouse]

Actually, "Prior Art" would only work if they already had a video game with weird effects. However, that bit about a nontrivial innovation would apply. If you play CoC, and make a video game out of it, then the idea of measuring sanity doesn't take a whole lot to come up with. "Gee, there's already this thing called 'sanity' in CoC...I'd better put that in the video game too!" In that sense, you could fight the patent.

--LWM

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[Gorath99]

Is there a video game for Cthulhu? The patent specifically states it is for a video game.

Quite a few, actually.

Here's a recent one and here's an old one. There are several others. I don't know if any of them use Chaosium's sanity system, though.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[RailGunner]

So would ASC Games, makers of Sanitarium.

Sierra On-Line has prior art, as well: Phantasmagoria II had a main character who hallucinated and saw the walls bleed as he descended into madness.

Further proof software patents are stupid.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[wo1verin3]

What about the dream scenes in Max Payne? The player relived the murder of his wife and child with erie music and moving walls/floors....

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[fbjon]

Not to mention the hallucinations in the original Team Fortress for Quake1. When hit by a stun grenade, the world would start going seasick, you'd see explosions from nowhere, and hear gunfire like it's total warfare all around you.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[Dachannien]

From the FAQ on the Call of Cthulhu game website:

Q. What is the 'Sanity' system?
A. The 'Sanity' system is a representation of Jack's sanity in the game. This can be unbalanced by what Jack sees, hears and reads as he explores Innsmouth, and can be restored through finding areas of sanctuary or destroying evil creatures. A loss of sanity can be represented in many ways -- such as hearing mysterious voices, hallucinating or suffering visual impairments (double vision and inability to focus).

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[Chris Burke]

I still don't understand when people say these things, I played Eternal Darkness and not only was I killing too many enemies to possibly get my meter down, but even once it did get down I never had any "nasty" tricks pulled. That's the REASON I played the game, I thought it was going to be a bunch of nasty tricks put together, but it turned into a boring game.

You basically had to deliberately allow your sanity meter to go down and not recover it beyond killing enemies. Picking the green idol at the beginning makes this easier, since the green enemies do more sanity damage. You had to be careful then, though, because strong enemies would do a lot of sanity damage and you would eventually take health damage instead.

I let my sanity ride at about 0 most of the time, because I really liked the creepy sound effects, bleeding walls, skewed angles, and the occasional funny trick. But in general I agree that the idea was very underused. Mainly because very few of the sanity effects actually affected the game. Either it was something completely ignorable, like bleeding walls, or a "hallucination" that would end and warp you back one room with no harm done.

Also, putting "MUTE" on the screen wasn't the nastiest or best trick ever pulled... instead of "MISSION FAILED" it said "FISSION MAILED".

Cute. Actually the MUTE thing wasn't the best trick in ED by far, especially because it was obvious it wasn't for my TV. Some better tricks (on the player) in order of increasing freakiness:

Room full of zombies start beating the snot out of you and an authentic replica of the game's "Controller not found please check your connection" dialogue appears.

You access the save menu, and suddenly a progress meter appears saying "deleting..." as you watch your save games vanish.

And the best: You finish a mission and return to the "hub" level of the mansion, and suddenly a screen appears: "Thank you for playing Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Continue the battle against the Ancients in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Redemption, coming soon to the Game Cube!"! That one actually got me to shout "What the fuck!" at my screen. Then I laughed because suddenly I understood how Shenmue players felt.

In summary, Eternal Darkness was a great game, but its main gimmick was underdeveloped and somewhat dissapointing despite a few gems (that you missed, much is the pity). Oh, and patenting an Insanity Meter is fucking retarded.

Eternal Darkness?

[leafsfanatic]

Didn't they do this already with Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube? Way to patent something years after you put out the product!

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[RPI Geek]

From TFA:

Filed: December 14, 2000

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[Iriel]

However, the specifications of the patent can be easily cirumvented by altering a small number of details.

Many people on Slashdot keep forgetting (or never learned) that Nintendo patenting a sanity system in a video game doesn't mean that any sanity system is covered under this. For the patent to be granted, it has to contain enough specifications to make it unique. You cannot patent an idea. The Nintendo patent on the sanity system is simply one implementation of it. If someone wanted to to yank the old delerium system from the White Wolf tabletop systems (with their permission, of course), then they wouldn't have to worry about the patent in the least, as long as it wasn't a direct copy of Nintendo's specs on a video game sanity system.

As long as there has been 'reasonable modification' to the currently patented system registered, another company could create a game with their new 'insanity engine' and even patent that as having significant improvment on an existing patent.

Nintendo isn't trying to monopolize the horror/action horror video game industry people. They just want to protect their own specific method of inciting character insanity in the video game engine.
</finallytakingabreath>

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[kansas1051]

You're entirely correct. The scope of a patent is determined by its claims. Claim 1 of the nintendo patent is incredibly broad:

1. A method of operating a video game including a game character controlled by a player, the method comprising:

(a) setting a sanity level of the game character;

(b) modifying the sanity level of the game, character during game play according to occurrences in the game, wherein a modifying amount of is determined based on a charater reaction and an amount of character preparation; and

(c) controlling game play according to the sanity level of the game character, game play being controlled at least by varying game effects according to the game charater sanity level.

IMHO, tons of video games anticipate this claim, including the original quest for glory (getting drunk) at least one of the Ultimas (eating mushrooms), and any of the grand theft autos.

Even more interesting, is that the USPTO was only able to cite one reference during examination, thereby explaining this broad claim.

Details

[HD Webdev]

Filed: December 14, 2000
PCT Filed: December 14, 2000
PCT NO: PCT/US00/33717
371 Date: September 3, 2002
102(e) Date: September 3, 2002
PCT PUB.NO.: WO01/62359
PCT PUB. Date: August 30, 2001

Nethack!

[Tiredoflurkin]

Rogue/ Nethack had this 20 YEARS ago, albeit in ASCII.

Let's just get this out of the way

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This patent isn't for a future product. It's years old and it's for the game "Eternal Darkness".
   
2. Nintendo is like, never ever in a billion years going to enforce this patent. Ever. If you look at their patent record you'll find they patent damn near everything but don't use the patents for anything. This is just the standard corporate "patent shield" technique, and it works very well; right now Sony and Microsoft have to pay rediculous license fees for the right to make rumble controllers, but Nintendo doesn't, because Nintendo picked up a patent before the company doing all the suing got theirs.
   
3. If Nintendo wanted to enforce this patent they'd have very little luck since Eternal Darkness is a complete and total rip off of Call of Cthulu. (This is a good thing. Call of Cthulu is awesome, and so is Eternal Darkness.)

Possible prior art: nethack and falconseye

[mikael]

Anyone who has played 'nethack' will know the visual and auditory effects of applying a cursed unicorn horn or drinking a "Potion of Hallucination" anywhere in dungeon, and the possibly fatal effects.

And anyone who has played 'falconseye', an isometric user interface for 'nethack' will note that these effects are implemented both visually and accoustically.

To quote 'nethack':
"You hear an attorney jingling in the distance"

Prior Art

[dukerobinson]

Max Payne

ROTT

[LynchMan]

Hmm. Wouldn't ROTT (Rise of the Triad) be prior art (circa 1997-1998 maybe?). I remember it having a 'shroomin' mode - where if you ate some mushrooms, it got all trippy for a minute or two...

But I guess that taking drugs is not covered by this patent:

character's sanity level that is affected by occurrences in the game such as encountering a game creature or gruesome situation

Let the pill popping games begin!

Re:Eternal Darkness.

[Thuktun]

Moria and Angband have had hallucination status flags a decade before Nintendo submitted this patent. It wasn't a variable effect, but when something triggered hallucinations it caused you to see all sorts of things that weren't there and couldn't be acted on.

Of course, since those are free, open-source games, nobody saw the need to patent features like that.

Claim Analysis 101

[thebdj]

For effect we are going to analyze the broadest claim the way it should be analyzed. Get out your notebooks cause you'll want to understand this before you complain about another patent.

1. A method of operating a video game including a game character controlled by a player, the method comprising:

This "preamble" tells us we are dealing with a mode of operating a video game. It further says that there is a game character and that said game character is player controlled. Straight forward so far, but we have limited ourself to the realms of video games and the user controlled characters there-in.

(a) setting a sanity level of the game character;

We are now assigning a sanity level to the game character that was mentioned before. This means that some sort of value for sanity is being set, this is somewhat similar to what would be done for health, mana, or the like; however, it is important to note at the same time that it IS DIFFERENT.

(b) modifying the sanity level of the game, character during game play according to occurrences in the game, wherein a modifying amount of is determined based on a charater reaction and an amount of character preparation;

We are now changing the sanity level for the character during game play, this limits the setting to occuring while the game is actually being played. Now there are two things that determine the modification amount: (1) characters reaction and (2) amount of character preparation.
This is now two more limitations that must be met in any prior art (including possible multiple references for 35 USC 103(a) obviousness).

(c) controlling game play according to the sanity level of the game character, game play being controlled at least by varying game effects according to the game charater sanity level

Now the game is affected by the sanity level of the mentioned game character. Now it states that at the very least game effects will be varied according to the game character's sanity level. This means that some degree of changes in some characters of game play will be changed based on this level.

Now to defend this over mentioned prior art, Nethack people keep mentioning the hallucination potion. This has 0 to do with the patent if that is true. The system used for Nethack could simply have stated, if potion=TRUE then change the effects. This is therefore different then the current patent, unless someone can show otherwise that the system as claimed above is EXACTLY how Nethack was done.

This similar thing goes for other games. If they used different methods then it would not preclude the patenability of this patent. Remember prior art needs to be before the filing date on this application, also remember that if the system used in other games is unknown, and unpublished the individual companies would have to make aware that they invented such a system to preclude patentability and get the patent nulled.

Remember what is in the claim is what the patent is for and do not confuse the spec for what the patent is good for. The specification is put there so the public knows the "Best Mode" for the invention. Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Re:Word Usage/Grammar in Abstract

[alienw]

See that "tr.v."? That means "transitive verb". Which means that the phrase "has an affect" is incorrect. The word 'affect' can be used as a noun, but then it has a completely different meaning. The correct way to use 'affect' is in a phrase like ' affected the profit margin'.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

[Danuvius]

http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/call_of_cthulhu_da rk_corners_of_the_earth/preview/108608

Human minds are fragile, and when they see things that are too frightening, too ghastly, or too wrong, they can start coming unglued in unfunny ways. If the player beholds any unbalancing element, the screen distorts with a number of unique "sanity" effects that not only make everything look more enigmatic and threatening, they also erode the player's ability to coherently aim and properly move about. There will also be distracting auditory hallucinations, taking the form of voices in one's head. And we all know how troubling that can be. Um, right?

If sanity erodes too drastically, the ultimate debilitating penalty may result; if Walters is holding a loaded firearm, he's liable to summarily turn it on himself and blow his own head off from terror, despair, or whatnot. Game over.

Mental damage, like physical damage, is cumulative through a level -- and the only immediate "treatment" for mounting mental instability is to decisively banish, blast, or otherwise stomp some Cthulhoid horror's eldritch ass to death. The temporary (if ultimately empty) physical victory gives our hero a sense of accomplishment, a little world-reordering sanity to set his mind at ease.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/callofcthul hudarkcote/preview_6125712.html

We got to see some of the game's sanity effects as Walters starts to see the world through the eyes of his enemies, or starts to feel disoriented and dislocated. We were told that, if Walters gets too in over his head and loses all of his sanity, he may even involuntarily turn his weapons on himself. The sanity effects in the game are not governed by any onscreen meter, so it'll be up to players to try to see through Jack's mental issues.

Yoshi Halucinates...

[Doppler00]

And the best example of this: Yoshi's Island. Ah... who can forget the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"

Hallucinating indeed...