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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."
I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.
"Prior Art"
I hope.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
The only game I can recall with a decent sanity system was Eternal Darkness for the gamecube. I'm sure there were others, but that was the only one that left an impression on me.
The Silent Hill games have an insanity system, but it's less related to the characters and more related to the world.
In theory, the new Cthulhu game has a sanity system, which may count as prior art, and that brings up an interesting idea. Does a system that has been developed but not yet released count as prior art?
I'm just hopeful that this leads to some new games exploring insanity.
Agreed. Great game. What's interesting is that it was a joint title between Nintendo and Silicon Knights. Now that Silicon Knights is a 3rd party I wonder how they feel about this?
in addition to the other examples already given.
On a related note, Redneck Rampage got all squirrly when Leonard drank too much. Someone planning to patent in-game drunkeness?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The Spec means nothing. The considerably broader claims are what is actually covered by the patent. That spec could read on several embodiments of the same system and in the end only one of those embodiments may be specifically covered by this patent, or the claims could be so broad to cover then all. However, their coverage is not limited to these embodiments, so any other system that reads along the claims could still be infringing the patent. As I have said tons of times, please read patent law and procedure of the United States. There are many things that you (the Slashdot community) really DO NOT KNOW or UNDERSTAND.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I'm not a big fan of software or method patents in the slightest. However, if you have to make a method patent... barring prior art *within the realm of computer and video games*, this patent looks like a fairly reasonable one.
Call of Cthulhu and even Unearthed Arcana from d20 have implemeneted sanity points with varying effects. However, to my knowledge it had not been implemented in an interactive computer gaming environment prior to Nintendo's work, and it was an innovative solution. Although a method patent is unreasonable by its very nature, Nintendo and its programmers did some innovative work and that deserves legal respect.
You know, I kind of regret writing that. I'll feel really filthy in the morning.
The PC game "Chaser" had something like this right in the beginning. While running around you'd get quick flashbacks and hear someone saying your name. It was freaky the first time through.
This may be a bit OT, but I have to admit that the idea itself is actually quite cool. There's so much focus on physics engines and graphics engines, yet developers almost seem to forget that the marine in Doom should really just be peeing himself and freaking out.
At least in the original Half-Life, they acknowledge Gordon being freaked out by focusing on his breathing and heartbeat in the first early cutscene during the accident. Considering the stressful situations most protagonists in modern games go through, you would think that there would be some effect on their sanity and basis in the "real" world.
A really neat trick though would be using a sanity engine to actually inspire dread IN THE GAMER, instead of just to the gamer's character onscreen.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Of course, while I don't remember hallucinations in that game, there were hallucinations if you wandered aimlessly through the desert in Infidel, another Infocom game.
Illbleed for the Dreamcast had something sort of like a sanity system, in that your mental state was affected by the horrors you witnessed, and could lead to a heart attack.
Maybe Nintendo was afraid of what happened with SEGA's Crazy Taxi where a Simpson's licensed Crazy Taxi-like game was released by another company (Simpson's Road Rage). (Not that this excuses this kind of patent, of course.)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Tetanus on Drugs, anyone?
/. somewhere... I can't seem to recall his nick just at the moment, though...
"Tetanus On Drugs simulates playing a Tetris® clone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs."
The author lurks on
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
But what next, from NetHack can we expect Nintendo to patent?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But this patent isn't like a poison or drug effect, it was filed in response to Eternal Darkness.
This game is UNIQUE. You have a sanity meter, and as it goes down your character starts hallucinating. You bring the meter back up by killing enemies, and thus regaining your confidence. Sometimes, the hallucination was obvious, designed to make you laugh (walls bleeding, walking on the celing, strange noises, etc).
But some instances were devilishly clever. One time, I was playing late at night, with the lights off. Suddenly, the sound cuts out and I see a big pixelated "MUTE" on the screen.
I start looking around in the dark, trying to see if my stupid ass had rolled over the remote, when the sound suddenly cut in and my character screamed "WHAT IS GOING ON!". Freaked me out.
It doesn't matter that the "MUTE" didn't look quite like my TV's overlay, at that point I was too into the game to think that out. Best trick ever pulled on a player. Why is this unique? The nastier tricks were rare, and never repeated (something you can't say for, say, status ailment effects, which are usually the same, or predictable).
Other nasty tricks that only happened once:
Hallucinating and seeing additional ghouls in an area I'd already cleared, with them appearing right behind me.
Hallucinating that I'd blown my head off trying to reload a flintlock pistol. Thought I'd have to restart the whole battle until the hallucination ended.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Certainly so. Even the MUD I admin for has such an effect, and has for years (a 100 to -100 based "mind" status, a positive number representing insanity and negative representing fatigue. 0 is the optimal level.) Causes various in game effects, including failing to see things that are, seeing things that aren't, shifting colors in the text, random words getting scrambled, etc.
As they weren't patenting a specific "level" of graphics here, I wonder if even that would qualify for prior art? Is the EFF going to work to nail this one?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It doesn't matter that the "MUTE" didn't look quite like my TV's overlay, at that point I was too into the game to think that out. Best trick ever pulled on a player. Why is this unique? The nastier tricks were rare, and never repeated (something you can't say for, say, status ailment effects, which are usually the same, or predictable).
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.
Also, putting "MUTE" on the screen wasn't the nastiest or best trick ever pulled. In MGS2 (I didn't really enjoy this game, I just got really bored and ended up playing through it), at the end, you enter this big room and a bunch of enemies rush at you from all directions. I was fighting, fighting, fighting, then all the sudden it executed the "MISSION FAILED" stuff, same music, same screen, everything, but in the top left hand corner the game was still going on instead of zooming in on you.
When I heard the music and saw the screen come up I threw the controller across the room and refreshed a page on here (slashdot). Glanced at the screen again and noticed instead of "MISSION FAILED" it said "FISSION MAILED". I was utterly confused for a good 10 seconds, then I noticed the screen in the corner, I picked up the controller, moved left, moved right, and hurried to kill the people that were attacking me for the last 20-30 seconds.
That was the best trick ever pulled, and I would like a game made SOLELY for these purposes, Eternal Darkness didn't have enough apparently, since I never saw one in the 8 or so hours I played it.
Has nobody seen the hilucination in max payne... man that was trippy.
Most people have; one of the best 3rd person games ever made. I thought though though it was a dream sequence, not a halucination...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Eternal Darkness does that as well. One of the hallucinations is that after walking through a door, you're surrounded by zombies, and then the message indicating that your controller is unplugged pops up on the screen. You can only watch helplessly as the zombies beat you to death.
:)
You have to have a pretty low sanity meter to see this stuff, though. I guess you were too good at killing things to get that low. Perhaps you should have slacked off a little.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
That sounds fascinating, can you provide any more info on the show, e.g. title? I had a google for it, but to no avail and I'd really like to see this footage.
Thank god this was petented in the US and you and your parent clearly talked about patents in the US, because I acutally had a discussion about this aspect of patent law in Germany with my dad who holds (and defended) more than one patent, albeit in electronics and appliance design. Anyway, what I learned from that is that at least in Germany you patent a specific implementation, and not the broad claims. One pet patent of his is a special drawer for silverware in dishwashers (Miele brand btw.) at the top of the machine instead of a box in the bottom (easier to handle yadda yadda), and the point he aways makes about it is that competitors cold just have done the same, if the had configured the thing slightly different than in the description. The claim about doing a drawer at the top were basically void, and the point was about how it was designed and attached to the rest of the machine. Cleverly worded it was still no easy feat to find the holes to wriggle thru as competitor, but possible.
Just FYI though.
Rise Of The Triad. Just eating the mushroom "power-up" in the game nullifies part C of the patent "automatically" since the game actually made you move in non-straight directions while you were tripping your balls off. Plus you couldn't shoot straight.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.