Wow that’s depressing. I guess the main solace is that if Sony patents this then we’re unlikely to see this practice on other systems.
Still, on the long list of shit we need to fix with America, fixing the patent system is a big one.
Large corps buy them like lotto tickets and try to patent anything and everything they can.
Look how long WB has sat on the Nemisis system because they got a patent a decade ago on it. It wasn’t really a unique idea, but thousands of games have been prevented from doing anything similar.
They patented a very specific algorithm for a very specific kind of game. You can still do knock-offs of the system in the same way you can make RTS games without asking Blizzard’s permission or platformers without asking Nintendo’s.
I would suspect that SoM’s system is complex enough that nobody’s been eager to try and replicate it. But they high level concept of randomized enemy generation isn’t something you can patent. Neither is randomizing story elements between NPCs.
Digital Extremes was going to do something somewhat similar with their nemesis system in Warframe but had to scrap it because of that patent. So now we have the mediocre Lich/Sister/Boyband systems in place instead.
The Lich system was pretty close to the mark. Possible that developers gave the underlying features of SoM a wide berth out of caution, but so much of this seems to boil down to “we don’t want to risk the possibility of a lawsuit” rather than “we can’t just do our thing and see if WB’s lawyers care enough”.
So long as you’re not directly ripping off the code from another system, patent courts have been pretty generous in interpreting overlapping abstract concepts.
But any kind of suit is scary, particularly for studios that aren’t geared up to fight them.
It wasn’t complex at all. It’s incredibly simple
What is your problem with it? Just seems like an accessability feature to me. The one issue I see with it is folks who don’t need it using it in lieu of walkthroughs and wasting energy. I don’t expect that to be that big an issue though, generally people buy games because they want to play them.
Just screw disabled people eh?
Somethings aren’t possible for people to do, this would allow them to enjoy playing games still.
I’m just gonna end up being an old man in my basement, staying warm with the radiant glow from my CRT monitor while playing SNES, Genesis and NES games.
I’m already there. It’s peaceful.
-inserts Aladdin geneses cart- “Then the fire nation attacked.”
Just make a fuckin movie!
Sony:
There is a small bit of intrigue here, imagine you get to a boss and think, ‘this is impossible’ but there is an ability to observe a ghost of your character taking the boss on in your gear.
Bare in mind as well that ‘AI’ has existed as a word in gaming for decades and has nothing to do with LLMs, surely this is achieveable purely with the gaming definition of ‘AI’ simply coding the PC also as an NPC that reacts to things.
Yeah, it really annoyed me that the author of this piece doesn’t understand the distinction between AI as a concept (always around in computing) and AI as in LLMs and the other stuff.
So… What’s the point of playing then?
Games are expected to pose some sort of challenge, of difficulty, to keep the player interested. Even if it boils down to pure frustration at some point, making some turn from it, even learning how to deal with it is useful. Games are some of the oldest teaching tools we stumbled upon.
This another move on human and individual agenda, on learning how to exist, to an extent.
This isn’t funny.
it’s not about playing, it’s about paying. The sooner you finish the game, the sooner you buy another one.
Games are already too expensive and it has been made known. That is a sure way to make people abandon platforms.
Even if it boils down to pure frustration at some point
…the point where many people simply give up and refund? Maybe they’re trying to avoid something like that
That’s really funny. It never stops to amaze me how convenience replaced well considered options.
You spend the money, you get to keep it. The logic of guaranteed satisfaction is non-sense. Unless it is defective, what other reason is valid to return anything?
Some refunded games are indeed defective. Others are refunded because of false advertising. There are people that abuse the system, of course, but I still see the possibility of refunding as pro-consumer.
Cheat codes and difficulty settings have existed for forever. Dynamic difficulty is common, and used to great success in beloved games like left 4 dead. Just a different option to get past the part you’re stuck in is really nothing bad.
Cheat codes are one thing. You can abuse those to even smoth your learning curve to later beat the game clean.
The same logic can be used for difficulty settings: you play it, in harder and harder settings, to have a new/added challenge.
Dynamic difficulty I’m unaware of what it migh actually be buy I risk I have an idea.
The game playing itself? Sounds like a movie.
But I hope you are right.
Dynamic difficulty is the game adjusting the difficulty based on how well you’re doing, e.g. in the mentioned l4d (or maybe it was only l4d2 idk) if you have more health and healing, it will spawn more/harder enemies, and vice versa.
It’s sometimes also used in other ways, e.g. boss fights get easier after failing them a bunch, which I really don’t like because I want to decide myself whether I want to make the game easier. Though roguelite progression systems like in hades in effect do a similar thing, but the player is actually aware of it (though this is why I don’t really like roguelites).
Mainly I think whether this is a fine feature or shit will just depend on the ability to choose if you want the AI to beat the boss for you or not.
The same logic can be used for difficulty settings: you play it, in harder and harder settings, to have a new/added challenge.
I can absolutely guarantee that 99.9% of players do not ever replay a game they’ve beaten. You’re generalizing your own values and goals and they’re absolutely not as common as you think they are
You’re generalizing your own values and goals and they’re absolutely not as common as you think they are
Isn’t that what we are all doing, while engaging in this discussion? Better yet, isn’t Sony doing that exact same thing by thinking that putting an AI autoplay function into the games is what all players want or at least a gross majority?
Nobody is debating based on the sharing and comparising of proof and facts here; we are all sharing our personal view on the subject.
Better yet, isn’t Sony doing that exact same thing by thinking that putting an AI autoplay function into the games is what all players want or at least a gross majority?
…no? Where on earth does that come from?
Does adding a higher difficulty mean that the dev thinks all players want to play on it? Does adding accessibility features imply that everyone wants to play with subtitles? Does adding colorblind mode mean that they believe all of their players are colorblind?
Colorblind and subtitles are designed to include people, so they can enjoy a game or any other content, that otherwise would not be accessible for such individuals or would be otherwise diminished in quality or reach.
Difficulty tiers were created to extend the longevity, by adding extra challenge or even content to a game. Many games have - or had - content that was only accessible by playing one difficulty setting after the other. I don’t personally agree with it but it is(or was) a thing.
And isn’t Sony putting forward what the company understands is a new and useful feature to their games? AI autoplay? That is their thought on how a game should be enjoyed/played from that point onwards.
And in the chance I haven’t made myself clear enough at this point: I am not on a quest to prove others wrong. This is my take on the feature Sony will be inserting on their future games. If others find it good, good for them. Enjoy.
And the next patent will be about a controller, not actually being plugged into the console, but merely giving gamers the illusion of affecting the gameplay…
I also made my little brother player 2.
Every game is an idle game now… ?
Sure, why not.
Player counts is all Wall Street is looking for.
This feels like it’s going to incentivise developers to either make bad puzzles, or bad hint systems. Why bother with a good one if the platform has a “complete this for me” feature? It is basically impossible for players to get stuck or struggle, when they’re either shown the solution, or the game completes it for them.
Isn’t this already done with Mario game(s)? I think it was Super Mario Deluxe, where if you die enough times, Luigi shows up and will be doing the entire level for you including the ‘boss’ fight.
On Super Mario Wii U this happens. My daughter used it to see how to get through levels she was having trouble with. It’s frustrating to watch, though it showed me I was wrong that levels basically needed the run button to be held to make it across the gaps.
And then you can either accept that the ghost beat the level for you or go back to trying.
But, the thing is it’s not very difficult to do this with specific games. You can just record the inputs as they come in and replay those, which is how replays or saved games often work.
Seems like they want to be able to do this for arbitrary games, which requires a much more sophisticated system that can understand what’s on the screen, what the goals are, and how to achieve them using just video and audio feedback (and maybe hint documents from the makers).
I’m not sure how I feel about games that are easy enough that AI can play them, and that people might need help with them.
The games we play are that easy though. Dark souls with eyes = hard, dark souls to an entity which has no eyes, but can read RAM states = easy.
Most singleplayer games (so the opponents are clockwork) are easy to enough to play with heuristics, why do we need a whole ass neural network?
But what if with banana?
People want to do things with their friends and gaming is the acceptable addiction that is forcing non gamers to play anyways. So now games are… not games so much as they are just time wasters to fill in for experiences.
this just in the next generation of video games will play themselves. Due to rising costs though play time for most run-throughs will top out at about 90 minutes.
Oh boy, the darksouls community is doing to be very funny to read
…fuck off.
Sometimes I like to play a game on max difficulty, sometimes I choose easy chill mode so I’m all for games having a wide difficulty scale of options.
This just seems stupid, and more like they can’t be arsed to balance a bunch of difficulties so just slap some AI slop in there and call it done.
I don’t know if you can describe it as “can’t be arsed” when their proposed solution is so much harder to implement.
Opening an rdp connection to some dude in India so he can do it for you isn’t that hard.
Like some other AIs ended up being.
Nintendo has been doing this since the Wii era.
New Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Mario Maker 2…
Technically all the Rhythm Heaven games also have this feature.
