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Sony Patents Game Demos With Feature Erosion
MojoKid writes "When a game developer releases a demo, it's typically intended to entice players into first trying and then purchasing the full version. This is the stuff of Game Design 101 for most of us, but a crack team of cutting-edge gaming researchers at Sony have applied for a patent based on a novel concept: game demos that become progressively less fun the more you play. Sony refers to this as 'feature erosion.' The idea behind this dubious concept is that gamers will become hooked on a game while it's still in demo, then squawk unhappily as features and abilities they've unlocked begin to disappear. In order to prevent this, the player ponies up for the full version. A demo or program that provides limited functionality or play time is one thing; a game that's purposefully designed to take your progress away, in an admitted attempt to get you to buy once you've been hooked, is something altogether different."
Lots of demo software is designed to stop working entirely after the demo period expires. The concept of doing this gradually over time seems, if anything, more humane.
I suggest we roll over and go back to sleep -- or at least save our angst for worthy matters.
Don't crack dealers have prior art on this business model?
By the time you get comfortable and proficient in the game, it's worthless.
Sheldon
Didn't Sony recently try just this with the PS3?
Microsoft, of course, has done this with the Xbox 360 for a while. "Feature erosion" produces fans so dedicated, some are onto their second or third 360!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
They just patented shareware?
Hmm, like in Jedi Knight 2 and many other games, where you start with all your powers and lose them early in the game then have to earn them back... It might work. That or it would just be annoying than your run of the mill 30 minute gameplay demo.
I'm glad Sony have patented this. I don't buy Sony products, and no one else will be allowed to implement this.
This is a complete 180 degree turn from the old shareware concept, where you get to play the first chapter or two for free (which I think is the best hook). This can possibly backfire as there could be some confusion for the consumer. Any game that becomes "less fun" loses its value to purchase, as the consumer isn't always going to understand the concept of diminishing features. They just know the game isn't as much fun as it used to be a few days ago.
While a novel idea, I would think that in practice it would be much harder to put into action without frustrating potential customers, including teens. It would seem to me that this would likely lead to more piracy, as *some* people would become frustrated rather quickly and resentful over limitations that they seem as unreasonable. Steam does a better job with the "free weekend" specials, and other games often have playable demos with limited levels. Both of these methods seem to be infinitely better ways to tease customers into buying, since they know exactly what to expect from installing the demo. The Sony way introduces a bit too much uncertainty, imo, and might have the result of having me passing the demo up completely.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Hook up electrodes to the controllers that at the same time offer gradually increasing levels of electrocution and let us absorb nicotine through our skin. Only way to play without risk of death or any pesky side effects of severe electroshock is to buy the game. Of course that means the PS3 or PS4 will once again require more power and downgrade controllers from being wireless to wired but its the best thing for the sake of progress.
A demo or program that provides limited functionality or play time is one thing; a game that's purposefully designed to take your progress away, in an admitted attempt to get you to buy once you've been hooked, is something altogether different."
No it isn't. Not if it's called "a demo".
Infamous, Prototype and Bioshock2 all got progressively less fun to play as they wore on...
Or does the patent only apply to demos?
Go to hell Sony, we're tired of your shenanigans!
A conceptually identical scheme can be found, of all places, in StarForce. One of the things StarForce can do, upon detecting a fake disc, is degrade game functionality. I haven't actually seen this used in production (developers prefer simply locking the player out of the game), but it's clearly stated as a possible option in the StarForce pitch.
Now, precisely how am I to distinguish one of these from a game that is fun for the first five minutes and then gets tedious?
Or, if I may take the liberty of a car analogy, how much would you be tempted to buy a car that started losing power and becoming hard to steer near the end of the test drive?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sony is welcome to run with this patent. I don't think anybody else in their right mind would implement this.
It's like going into a car dealership, and the salesperson is all happy when you first meet him, but then when you take a test drive, he has you drive a beaten up version of the car. "Yeah, I'd show you how the car stereo works, but it's broken in this one, but trust me, it's awesome. Oh, by the way, I know it's like 100 F right now, but don't turn on the AC."
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
"Don't call it a virus, or a bug. It's feature erosion." TM
Say hello to my little sig.
Patents are cheap. There's no way Sony are going to actually go ahead with this (unless some market research actually tells them it's actually a good idea), but someone might work out a way to make it work and licence the patent from Sony.
I think the larger issue is not whether this is a good idea for a game demo, but why is an idea at this level of abstraction even patentable?
Why limit it to just demo's, just "erode" v1 when v2 comes out!
Homer vs the Movementarians
Jane: We're having a free get acquainted session at our resort this weekend.
Homer: How much is this free resort weekend?
Glen: It's free!
Homer: And when this weekend?
Glen: It's this weekend.
Homer: Uh-huh, and how much does it cost?
Glen: Um, it's free.
Homer: I see, and when is it?
Glen: It's this weekend.
Homer: And what are you for this free weekend?
What if, instead of increasingly raising the will to buy the real deal, the degrading demo would softly weane the gamers off the game in small steps... That would be funny and would serve Sony right because they're a big soulless corporation and besides, proprietary software is immoral.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Can you please just admit that you have no fscking clue how the patent process works and save us your idiocy?
Here is proof: http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/33
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Well, progressive crippleware, at least.
What's next, cracks for game demos?
I dunno, but this may backfire on them. Just one scenario: Picture a teenager with a limited budget, who plays games. Said teenager downloads one of these "demos" and plays it several times over a few days. The "demo" then starts to drop achievements or disable certain features before the teenager has the money to buy the full game. The demo becomes un-playable before the teenager's budget allows them to buy the full game.
Do you really think said teenager is going to be eager about buying the full game when his/her budget allows, if the demo has given them this kind of experience? I'm far, far from that scenario, but if I was in that situation and the demo essentially locked me out before I had the money to buy the full game, I'd be pretty pissed. And very unlikely to want to give the developer/publisher my money after that kind of experience.
After all, why do this at all? The demos are already "limited" in one or more ways, maybe a single level or a fixed amount of points or whatever. That is easy to understand and I have no problem with game demos where the limitations are known "up front". But a demo that changes the experience after a period of time or gradually disables features/achievements is a very different animal. Given a choice, I would probably not download these kinds of demos at all and stick to traditional demos. I only worry that if this becomes even somewhat successful, more developers will do it and the whole demo landscape will change for the worse. Or it will just drive more kids to download more illegal copies of the full game which don't have features removed.
The game publishers are just getting too greedy for money. I say publishers and not developers because this is mostly a publisher problem. It's closely related to DRM... they simply want to squeeze as much money from an many customers as possible. They will not be content until they can rent your games to you. And they will call this a "service". Oops, skipped your rent payment for a month?... sorry, you have to "buy" your games all over again. And remember what re-playability used to mean? Seriously, this is the direction the game industry seems to be headed in, driven by the big, greedy publishers.
Just my .02...
...abounds, under the name of Planned Obsolescence! How could any patent examiner with at least a high-school education fail to know that?
It remembers me Ambrosia Software Escape Velocity, great game, but the more you played the more a fake user will come in the game (Cpt. Hector) to steal your money and (as last resort) kill you, if you didn't buy the complete version after the demo period.. it's not *exactly* the same. but the main idea is there, date 15 years ago
This seems right in line with Sony's "shoot yourself in the Foot" efforts for quite a while now! They haven't seemed to get it right for quite some time, or even to "Get it" at all!
I like to refer to it as an 'arrogant scam', and not a 'demo'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... the summary would be about how clever and beneficial this was for the user experience.
Such idiotically blatant disrespect for their customers,
only Sony could be so stupid.
Oh, wait...
Game demos with feature erosion have been around for a long time in the form of developers gimping pirated versions of games or making them uncompletable/unplayable/play-hostile.
For example, in Batman: Arkham Asylum, some pirated versions would have Batman's Gliding move disabled. In Grand Theft Auto IV, pirated versions would have gravity suddenly go berserk, and with the Penny Arcade On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness game, pirated versions would be rendered uncompletable by a glitch.
Since some people "try/demo" games using the pirated versions, you could say that what Sony is trying to patent has already been done.
I think we should thank Sony for simplifying the process of cracking games. All you would need to do is reset the counter and possibly lock it, instead of having a figure out obscure and involved algorithms?
If you play the demo version of Windows 7, after some time period it starts locking up periodically, and you must buy a full version to restore the full game functionality.
Umm... wow. This doesn't even sound fun to begin with. In fact, it sounds so un-fun that I'm specifically going to avoid playing one of these! Obviously, if the demo gets progressively less fun, one can only assume the same thing for the full game.
Because they are served from Piratebay.
Games that can't be gotten from there? Little to no interest.
That's pretty much every game Sony gets its hands on! I guess SWG was just an early prototype. You know, how they took it and made it suck for everyone! Hey, I have an idea, maybe Sony could buy EA! Then they could also patent making increasingly crappy sequels to demos as time goes on, too!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
After the rootkit fisaco, Sony has done nothing to elevate themselves. Patenting some feature-limiting systems sounds like classic Sony.
In other Sony Stupidity, it seems they recently stole part of a popular Amsterdam landmark, to attract publicity towards one of their games. You'd have thought they would have learned from widely-publicized mistakes of others.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/press-review-wednesday-24-february
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2010/02/24/heavy-rain-washes-away-amsterdam-landmark
http://news.google.com/news/more?um=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=nl&cf=all&ncl=dQbgbhcNvNSes9Mf7y66XftD669lM
It is hard to believe Sony Marketing would really steal these huge, heavy steel letters without SOME kind of permit issued by the city, but I haven't been able to locate anything other than clues to Sony's breaking laws for $elf--promotion. If this marketing stunt really is true, that Sony had no city permit, I am very Angry with any corporation that would do this.
The classic quote I read in Dutch was: 'Can I reference this theft also, once Sony takes me to court for copying music CDs?'
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Windows has had "Feature Erosion" since 1995...
so did argent. mod up.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You're not entitled to anything, they gave you the demo. As a business model it may not work out that well... but then again, it might. It is impossible to predict whether the number of people turned off by this tactic will be outweighed by the number of people it convinces to buy the full version.
Quite frankly, it is the patent troll aspect of it that bothers me more. Trialware software which disables certain features after the trial period expires is nothing new. Why should Sony be able to patent this idea?
First off, TFA only manages to quote the abstract and show some figures. None of this really bears much relevance to what the application is actually directed toward. For that, you have to read the claims (such as this one):
1. A method of distributing a software game to induce a user to obtain a permission to continue playing the game, the method comprising:
providing a software game with a plurality of play characteristics including at least one of a character feature, object feature, environmental feature and event feature, the software game being programmed to permit the user to use the plurality of play characteristics, the software game being further programmed with at least one trigger metric;
gradually eroding availability of at least one of the play characteristics as a function of the at least one trigger metric as a consequence of use of the software game by the user while continuing to permit the user to play the game, and wherein the at least one trigger metric is a game event-based function;
restoring availability of the eroded play characteristics upon receipt of the permission to continue playing the game.
And second, the headline on this article is wrong. No patent has been issued. Sony has not patented this. The only things that have happened are (1) the inventor has filed an application for a patent, and (2) after 18 months elapsed from the filing date, the USPTO published the application. Sony could eventually get a patent on this, or they might have to amend the claims to get around the prior art, or they might end up abandoning the application.
I would like to patent the idea of patenting ideas. geee.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Since Sony owns the patent, we can be assured that nobody but Sony will do this.
So, we won't have to put up with it much, and it will mostly be for games we don't want anyway.
If only a person could win a "darwin" award, for the stupidest idea... that does't kill you, this would be in the running, hands-down!!!
Please tell me the geniuses who game up with this idea are sterile??
...squawk?
Always more concerned with making games not work than they are with making them work.
I recall the original Sim City had a unique form of copy protection in that if the game was pirated, natural disasters would be repeatedly unleashed on your city at a rate much higher than usual, making the game decidedly less fun. Very similar concept to this patent application. I don't know if it would count as prior art though.
How about the PPV movie ver of this where a box that says do you want to buy this movie at $ yes / no? just gets bigger and bigger to point of going full screen.
It's like having a girlfriend that does more and more intolerable things until you agree to marry her!
Month 1: Throw dishes on the floor
Month 2: Crash your car
Month 3: Screw 40 men in 'Gangbang Sluts 4'.
Month 3: Put strychnine in your coffee
Thereby, your incentive for marriage increases dramatically over time! It's genius!
The free food sample, that has extra chemicals to leave a nasty after taste.
The test drive, where parts of the car keep fall off the further your drive.
Or the 1st date where she becomes ever more like her mother as the hours pass.
A movie trailer, that gets more inane each time you see it. Ads that become ever more insulting to your intelligene... oh wait.
But why stop there? This is small time stuff. I say we actively seek out anyone considering buying our game and giving them a sound beating. That should teach them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Similar to organizations that buy patents with the intent to make them open to all, I think that there should be a think tank that tries to come up with and preemptively patent bad ideas to keep them out of the hands of greedy organizations. Focused advertising, draconian worker "motivation" schemes, etcetera, are all good candidates. And, if there is enough of a war chest, it could attempt to buy existing bad patents in order to lock them down, though I fear that would simply incentivize third party development of consumer (and employee) unfriendly patents.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
I can't remember what software it was, but I remember running across it in the late 90s, possibly as late as 2002.
And although it was a different way to get people to try the software before buying, nobody liked it.
I wonder if Sony listed it in their prior art section.
(If they did, I don't see how it could ever get approved, as it's essentially saying "we exactly duplicated a function some else already made and published, so give us sole rights to something that we don't have anything to do with cause we're greedy"...)
Really wish I could remember what the name(s) was/were.
Sorry, what was I writing about... FIRST POST! No wait a sec... In Soviet Russia, YOU get patented? No...
I need a stipend to finish this post.
This is a horrible idea! I've been playing game demos since the early 90's and now to possibly see sony's "invention" of demo's that start losing features or taking your progress away, all in the hopes we will be mindless sheep and say "OMG I MUST BUY THE FULL VERSION NOW" are sadly mistaken.
I would be rather pissed off at a demo doing this, and I would not "pony up" my hard earned cash to get a full version, especially when Sony has a bad track record with software as well, remember the whole rootkit idea they dreamed up a few years back?
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
The very first one, I remember playing that when it came out. See, the demo version was "limited" by a timer, and some patches eventually came out to remove the timer, effectively making it less of a demo... But the thing was, I never installed one of those patches, and I never bought the game, but holy hell did I play that demo a lot. I probably played it for a couple hours every day for three weeks straight. Because that demo timer started at three minutes or whatever, but every time you killed a bystander, it added like ten seconds to the clock. Soooo... what actually ended up happeneing, was that the demo version, at least for me, ended up being as fun if not more fun than what the full game was intended to be. If you stopped killing, only then would the game end.
I seem to remember that the BitMap Brothers (responsible for SpeedBall, GODS, etc) released games that included code that detected whether or not the copy was pirated and if so, rather than disable the game entirely, just made it painfully harder to complete.
So now you don’t have to download the game via torrent, but do it right from the developer’s site, and then apply the crack that disables the feature erosion.
So: Yay, for a future of full-bandwidth downloads! ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Its called Fade - Codemasters already use it... but as DRM
Just because it works, Doesn't make it right. - JTM
It really seems like the executives at certain companies-- Sony, MS, ATT-- wake up every morning and ask themselves: How can we screw our customers today? What would they pay us not to do?
OTOH, the idea of a demo that weans you off of wanting to play the game before you pay for it... not so bad. Better to find out what dicks they are before you spend the money.
The fact remains....this applies to DEMO's. What kind of idiot wouldent want the full version of a game they are hooked on? I play a demo, i think its great, i buy the game (i don't keep playing the demo while the game is already released because that would be considered borderline insane)
become progressively less fun the more you play
Crack addiction?
Have gnu, will travel.
:"progressively less fun the more you play"
So, nothing to see here move along now?
This is old tech. They used to call it Everquest.
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
I for one have deep respect for any vendor who implements this idea. By taking all the fun out of the game before I buy it, they'll do a great service to the human race by freeing up time for me to do something with my life.
Three cheers for Sony!
Any time I get some demo of a product that loses some or all functionality over time I feel heavily pressured to try and use as many of the features I can within the time limit. I can't really enjoy the demo this way, it is not how I would start playing if I had the full version. Yes, being able to test all the features of the game will let me better evaluate it, but there are other ways to let players test features.
If you (and have permission from Sony) are going to implement this, you should consider limiting the overall play experience rather than trying to handicap the players. A game that ends up only letting you use a dagger if you play it for a long time may be an interesting challenge, and having these limitations may give the player incentive to continue playing the demo without getting the full version.
How I would do this is: As the player plays for longer periods, I would make it more tedious to play. Shop keepers will have their prices inflated over time, requiring the player to 'grind' more money; experience will be slower (but not more difficult) to obtain; bonus stages at the end of a level may only give you 1 attempt at the game, and only if you rack of 5 attempts in the level you just finished; special abilities take longer to charge (as long as this doesn't make the game significantly more difficult). If you really want to be mean, you can steal some of the player's currency they are saving up at random times to really fustrate them. Just don't take away their gear.
This is how Coke and Crack dealers work, they give a sample of the killest shit possible, a big sample, then next time the sample is a little less and a little less potent, till after 2-3 "free samples" they get you hooked and charge you $50 a rock!!! And the stuff you pay for wasn't as good as your first sample, so you continue to buy more games err rocks till you finally reach that euphoric high that you first experienced...
Visit my Forums?
In many online games that are free to play but have payed features, they often let you sample the payed features for a limited amount of time. Then these features go away unless/until you pay for them. So the only thing "new" here is they are using this "feature degradation" in demos.
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur"
Its only a patent application that has been very well written. There is nothing novel about it and it probably will be rejected. Many products like MS Windows have done this for some time. Its a form of "nag-ware" that has been applied in areas outside of games too. It is interesting to note it is actually a game in itself. Copyright is a more correct place for this and the USPTO has stated they'll crack down on applications of this sort.
Prior art is everywhere and this is just a matter of how much one can spend on lawyers. I should know. I'm involved in another patent which is probably valid. If its been published in print, that is prior art. Describing it on BBC at the start is not. This is how patent courts work. The test is to see if something previously written in software is 'prior art'. True, the 'one-click shopping' patent is pure troll. (It came from KDE, not my company at the time, DigiCash.) It is really a patent on scripts and what a script does at the most basic (high)level.
If software patents continue, those lands that accept them will lose out. You can't develop anything when you have to do a patent search and then patent it if its new. The end result would be fighting your patent and not doing anything useful.
True inventions apply science. ("Computer science" is a tool for science, not a science itself.) While software is truly engineering, it has no place with inventions: A new material, a novel application of a discovery (almost all inventions) and a process that leads to a novel substance, device or an improvement are inventions. The way aluminium is made today is invention. The structure of a computer and its parts is an invention and covers anything that can be done with it. The later is mathematical and expressly excluded. Modulation methods and codecs are a means to an end and while mathematical, qualify for short term protection. Crypto is probably just where it doesn't qualify. These are where 'the lines are drawn' in a rational legal environment.
Wonderful! Now we'll have a bunch of parasites designing cracks for demos filled with the latest trojans and rootkits!
So rather than more rootkits from BMG, we'll be able to enjoy them from the cracks for the demos! GARBAGE!
This is a terrible idea for one big reason. If you share a console you are screwed as one person might play the demo, get all the features stripped, then you go to play and the demo is as good as worthless. Now if he wasn't so keen on the game, but the demo may have sold you on the game, they've essentially lost a sale as you'll never find out that you'd actually like this game.
Shareware would actually have deccent content available in the free version.
And it was Great.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The most successful demo I've played was the one for Civilization 3. I think it was a two-hour demo, but it let me finish the game I had started (over 10 hours of gameplay). Every other demo I have played either gives you limited features or a hard time limit, which just makes you annoyed at the game. Needless to say, I bought Civilization 3 quickly after finishing my demo game, which is rare for me.
I understand games like Borderlands or Halflife can't let you play through the main story as you need something left to purchase, but they could always use a portion of the story campaign, or even make a short demo campaign properly designed to get you hooked. It just comes across so much better when the demo gives you an honest chance to enjoy their game, rather than coming across as a marketing gimmick as most of these crippled demos do.
My webcomic
hasnt sony been using this allready for years in games like eq1 eq2 planetside and especially star wars galaxies? :P
games that become progressively less
fun the more you play. Sony refers to this as 'feature erosion
sounds like a sony product to me :P lol
Amazingly simple. Drug dealers have been doing the same thing for Millenia.
The only people that think this is a bad idea are the ones that want to keep playing the demo version for free instead of buying the real deal.
A demo is just that. Rather than give you a "limited fature" version or a version that just plain old times out I'd prefer the full experience that degrades.
If I was having fun with the degraded feature it tells ME that that was why I thought it was fun and I'll either buy it to get that experience back or decide it wasn't fun enough.
Either way I had my chance to review the real deal and the fun is over. Time to pony up or get out of the stable.
"Bob, you should come over! I've got the demo for the new Bloodfist 7: The Bloodening!"
"Can't make it this week - see you on the weekend though."
ON THE WEEKEND:
"So what do you think, Bob?"
"Dude, this demo sucks!"
"Well, it was, like, better before."
"Are you high? I'm not buying this!"
"Aw. And it's multiplayer. I guess there's no point in me getting it either. But dang, I was sure it used to be better..."
A game demo is anyway an abridged form of the full game. Divide the game into episodes, give the first one for free and sell the full version separately.Epic Megagames pioneered this form of game distribution, and Doom further popularized it. In Doom, for example, the shareware version did not have the plasma rifle or the BFG. The full version had new episodes, new monsters and new weapons. It's been a long while since I played a game demo, but this was the model followed in the early days by the classics- Heretic,Hexen,Quake,Duke 3D and all their sequels And the original Halflife had a demo level that was not included in the full game (Halflife:Uplink) - useful gimmick! So why do this? Once you've played the demo, you would anyway have made up your mind whether or not to buy the full game. What sense does it make in restricting the playability of the demo itself?
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Brilliant... so now we can play demos, get a mistaken impression of what the game is like, and then decide that they're not worth buying when otherwise we would have bought the game after enjoying the demo!
Prior Art: "Roshambo"
lets see:
If we are talking console, then it would be tied to an account. make a new account, boom.
If we are talking PC, then it's leaving a trace somewhere, which will get cracked.
Sounds to me companies are just trying to think of new things to patent, not actually thinking about the practical side of it. Sure, sounds good to the board of directors, but in the real world?
Maybe they should spend the money and time into making fun games that aren't repeats of everything else? Don't make a game thats fun for a few levels, then boring as hell afterwords.
oh, nm, you don't listen to me.
Be seeing you...
Interesting business model, I am not sure it will take off, wasn't it Sony who introduced the much maligned CD copy protection .
isn't this what microsoft did with windows 7?