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 ?

[EasyTarget]

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

"Prior Art"

I hope.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[JimmehAH]

Call of Cthulhu computer game
Been in development about as long as Duke Nukem Forever.

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 ?

[sesshomaru]

Well, there is the old game from Infocom, The Lurking Horror, which was more of a knockoff of Call of Cthuhlu, they didn't actually get the license. The other problem is that it didn't have a Sanity system.

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.)

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[LurkerXXX]

Only a couple/few decades prior.

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 ?

[stoborrobots]

Tetanus on Drugs, anyone?

"Tetanus On Drugs simulates playing a Tetris® clone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs."

The author lurks on /. somewhere... I can't seem to recall his nick just at the moment, though...

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[mog007]

What about the Postal 2 expansion? That's certainly got prior art all over this.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[default luser]

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.

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 ?

[laughingcoyote]

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?

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[Aeiri]

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.

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.

Re:Call of Cthulhu ?

[Mornelithe]

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. :)

Prior Art?

[lilmouse]

Anyone played Doom while on LSD?

--LWM

Re:Prior Art?

[Asprin]

I had a friend in grad school (physics) who noted from personal experience that Sonic The Hedgehog was "invariant under LSD transformation".

Re:Prior Art?

[ShortSpecialBus]

Have you ever looked at the back of a $20 dollar bill??

On Weed????

So Who's gonna be the first to patent...

[Marc Desrochers]

STUPIDITY!

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?

[waynelorentz]

Who knew Nintendo and Apple had so much in common?

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[RPI Geek]

From TFA:

Filed: December 14, 2000

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[edwdig]

The patent was filed December 14, 2000. Eternal Darkness was released in 2002. Patents just take a long time to be processed.

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[Uhlek]

The patent was filed December 14, 2000.

And you're right, this matches identically to the system in Eternal Darkness. The sanity system was one of the big advertising points of the game -- this was probably to protect it.

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?

[th3space]

I'd pay to see Link or Mario lose their shit...I really, truly would. NeoGeo prices, at that.

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[thebdj]

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.

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[jizmonkey]

They just want to protect their own specific method of inciting character insanity in the video game engine.

Protecting themselves, my ass. You know how software patent opponents often trot out the strawman of literary patents? Richard Stallman, for example, pointed out that if literary patents existed, someone might have previously claimed "a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and becomes bitter towards society and humankind." etc. and then we'd get whatever lousy forgotten novel the first guy had written rather than Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

Well, this is another kind of art patent, a videogame plot patent. If you think a patent on a videogame plot device is okay, why not a movie plot device? We could have patents on "sleepless in seattle" plots, "genetic engineering sci-fi" plots, etc. Or a television plot device. Don't you think CBS would have loved to patent the idea of tropical paradise reality TV? For that matter, why didn't Nintendo patent the side-scrolling platform game when they wrote Super Mario Bros.? The answer is: It has always been against the rules.

This Nintendo patent is a little different than a design for an exhaust manifold or a windshield wiper, which are more usual examples of utility patents.

You need to get out of the mindset that someone has the right to make money doing something simply because he was doing that first. It's perverse, it's not capitalistic, and most of us don't share that view.

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.

Re:Eternal Darkness?

[cyxxon]

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.

first post

[mofag]

does that mean my boss needs to pay Nintendo?

Hmmmm

[nvlass]

Sounds more profitable than to patent Sanity :)

Obvious

[avgjoe62]

Isn't this patently obvious? How can one patent something so unoriginal? Besides, my in-laws are prime examples of prior art...

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.)

Re:Eternal Darkness, anyone?

[Rallion]

Um, You're aware that for all intents and purposes, ED might as well actually be a N-branded game, right?

Sanity Patent Insane

[gkozlyk]

Does this mean the USPTO could be sued by Nintendo in the future for all these ridiculous software patents.

Eternal Darkness.

[Gen. Rasputin X]

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.

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.

Re:Eternal Darkness

[Askjeffro]

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?

American McGee's Alice?

[StressGuy]

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?

Re:American McGee's Alice?

[hackronym0]

Leisure suit larry: magna cum laude - for xbox has a screen effect for drunkenness.

And as long as we're talking about it, Toe Jam and Earl has one for getting hit by cupid's arrow. It makes it so the direction that you press for forward may not be forward anymore and you have to dynamically adjust.

But if we keep listing all these things, I don't think it would be fair to patent a type of emotional or mental state. Or even effects that help you feel that way.

finally, if they do get these kind of patents, then they should be held responsible if someone goes insane from their game, or falls in love or gets drunk. Because the game created an emotional or mental state in the person, and that patent owner did it on purpose.

As a devout Marxist would say....

[ValhallaOne]

You can't fool me....there ain't no Sanity Clause...

Makes Sense

[burtdub]

InsanityTM is the only way to describe their business plan over the past ten years, be it the Donkey Congas, the Mario Party series, or the N64 game system.

Re:Patent Sanity?

[MarkGriz]

That's insane.

Seriously, how can this type of patent not get laughed out of the office?

Agreed.

It's patently insane.

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"

Re:Possible prior art: nethack and falconseye

[saddino]

No. Patent Name
1 6,935,954 Nintendo-Patent [max 1] died in the USPTO. Killed by Prior Art.

Re:Eternal Darkness, anyone?

[NattyBucho]

What do you mean? Nintendo published Eternal Darkness, and they essentially own the applicable rights to it. This patent was created for the game, so... what's so disappointing about this?

Microsoft's already done it.

[Ancient_Hacker]

you can't patent something that's already well known to the trade. Microsoft has been field testing their hallucination generator for some time now-- it's called their "help" pages.

Or nethack :)

[Rei]

Prior Art

Quaff what? [elr or *] r
Wow! Everything seems so cosmic now!
You hear the quarterback calling the play.
You hear Nieman and Marcus arguing.
You hear Doctor Doolittle!
You hear bees in your (nonexistant) bonnet!
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal bites!
You hit the samurai rabbit.
The Christmas-tree monster bites!
Open what? [fGi or *] f
The Barney the Dinosaur bites!
The Totoro bites!
The rodent of unusual size bites!
The tin contains sauteed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eat? [yn] y
You consume sauteed cockatrice.
You die...

Do you want your posessions identified? [yn]

Well, if something has to be patented...

[captainktainer]

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.

A Madness to Their Method

[Quirk]

The Discovery Channel ran a great little series on the Amazon Rain Forest. In one episode they used time lapse photography to show the slow sure growth of an Epiphyte that chose as its host one of the largest giant trees of the Rain Forest. The Epiphyte, starting from a sprout grew to completely obscure the giant tree. The tree blocked from sunlight died in the embrace of the epiphyte. When the host tree died a swath of the forest ecosystem died with it. The spooky part was that by the time the tree began to die you couldn't see it, the epiphyte completely engulfed the tree.

As a Canadian, watching the suffocating growth in Intellectual Property rights in America, I get a recurring image of the epiphyte choking the life of that giant tree. One day what nurished American industry will disappear choked off by patents, maybe we won't even see it die.

Re:A Madness to Their Method

[PseudoThink]

You should patent that analogy, it's great!

Re:A Madness to Their Method

[glesga_kiss]

The Discovery Channel ran a great little series on the Amazon Rain Forest. In one episode they used time lapse photography to show the slow sure growth of an Epiphyte that chose as its host one of the largest giant trees of the Rain Forest.

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.

Realism in games

[siphoncolder]

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.

Re:Realism in games

[g_lightyear]

On the patentability: Yes, there's oodles of parallel prior art.

On the game itself:

Mustn't be missed. The sanity system is *effective*; it really honestly does warp the player's perspective, make it honestly difficult to know what's real and what isn't, and does actually inspire a creepy sense of dread.

It makes you go out of your way to not create the situations that end up with you being insane. Loss of sanity happens through a few different ways, but basically it's "do something nuts, and go nuts; get hit by something freakish, and go nuts".

If a creature gets the jump on you, your sanity drops. If you get the first shot in, you keep your sanity unless it hits you physically - and then your sanity drops. Physical damage gets fixed, but the psychological damage can only be fixed through a different mechanism.

It's absolutely brilliant, and makes for *riveting* gameplay. Patents like this, which make it harder for people to innovate gameplay, shouldn't be allowed, IMO, if they're overly broad. It's too good an idea to only end up in one game from one company on one system - something like this belongs all over the place.

It's just brilliant.

great...

[ate50eggs]

it's hard enough maintaining my sanity without a licencing fee.

Sooo....

[warfudo]

Let me get this straight...does this patent cover the patent system itself? Or only video game representations of patent systems? Because this clearly falls under the category of 'insane'.

Prior Art

[dukerobinson]

Max Payne

Sanity Is in the Mind of the Beholder

[Doc Ruby]

In video games, walls bleed and maniacs laugh. What's "insane" about that?

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!

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.

Easy:

[abb3w]

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

Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

OK, unleashing the Old Ones to devour your competitors is a little unscrupulous, but at least it's not unleashing lawyers.

(And yeah, there's some prior art in Angband and other roguelikes, but I think it's more binary (off/on) than progressive in effect. There might be some substance to the patent.)

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.

NetHack groundbreaking

[ackthpt]

Definitely this happened to me on several occasions as my character was starving and desperate.

But what next, from NetHack can we expect Nintendo to patent?

• Character goes blind
• Character polymorphs
• Character acquires intrinsic abilities by eating corpses of certain monsters
• Character squeezes one last wish from a wand of wishing

Re:Max Payne

[rainman_bc]

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...

Nintendo Slashdot Logic

[einhverfr]

1) Patent Insanity
2) Collect underpants by suing insane people for using your patented invention.
3) ???
4) Profit

Re:Patent Sanity?

[blofeld42]

I don't see how this can hold up in court. Everyone knows there ain't no Sanity Clause.

Yoshi Halucinates...

[Doppler00]

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

Hallucinating indeed...

I'm surprised nobody even remembers.....

[Khyber]

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.