Recently, I complained in a review of Robocop: Rogue City that the game desperately needed user save points in the game. That game autosaves at the cut scenes versus allowing gamers to save when/where they want. Apparently, Sony is trying to patent the process of saving games at any point using “trigger points” via Insider Gaming:
As the user plays their game, information regarding ‘media content’ will be stored, with trigger points being associated with ‘specific data sets’
– The user will have the opportunity to stream media content over ‘a communication work’ to their device
– These ‘trigger points’ will be offered to the player while they stream media, watching back through gameplay, which they’ll be able to select at will
– The system will identify ‘game data’ associated with said trigger points
– Based on the game data associated with the trigger points, the system will ‘launch the interactive title for gameplay by the user device based on the identified set of game data associated with the select trigger point
You can read patent US20230347239 – CONTENT STREAMING WITH GAMEPLAY LAUNCH here: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US412494279&_cid=P21-LOL1SD-06631-1 as is pictured at the top of this post.
An interesting side story to this is older games, the arcade/commercial ones, didn’t have any kind of pause or save points, you just played them until you either failed the game or gave up. Those games were simpler in gameplay, but incredibly difficult to master and there would be no logic in saving them, since businesses wanted to make money when the game was over. Many years later, emulation would provide a way for game pauses and save points, which makes me wonder if what Sony is trying to patent here is really something generic that has already been done?
Also, the author of the linked article wonders where all these save trigger points from all these games are going to be saved? Local saves make more sense than cloud saves, but today we’re in a growing cloud gaming world. Storage space might be the bigger business behind the scenes here. What do yu think of Sony’s proposed patent? Do you think it’s something that should not have a patent slapped on it? Or no, it’s a good idea? Discuss.
PC games have had this for years. It’s called a quick save or manual save. They choose not to have them in games anymore for some reason. And it should not be cloud based. Not everyone wants to be constantly connected. Not to mention, sorry, you can’t load that save state anymore, we don’t have the license anymore. You can still play but you have to start over.
Indeed. I wouldn’t think of Sony as a patent troll, but not sure what they are up to here, exactly. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody has tried to patent something that has been done multiple times before.