I’ve just recently completed my master thesis, entitled “Game Design Patents- Protecting the Internal Mechanisms of Video Games?” which aims to explore the importance of patents in the game industry and their impact on economy, creativity and innovation. The paper is downloadable from www.playresearch.com, under research > ubiquitous gaming > game design patterns > publications. I guess it may seem a bit hefty at first glance, but this is mainly due to the fact that I had to include some rather extensive appendices. This thread is meant to discuss the contents of my report. Give me your spontaneous comments and (constructive) criticism!

Argh... Hi-score list is patented? and First Person shooter, tournament, tiles, ROLE PLAYING? TEAM PLAY? SINGLE PLAYER GAME?? er.. Some prior art here possibly?

If these frivolous patents were to be enforced, NOONE could make any games... I remember when Hasboro was suing teenagers because they hade made freeware and shareware versions of Tetris.. How did that go by the way?

I''ve only looked at parts of it.. I''ll look at it when I feel more awake..

Personally I''m agains patents. If a few companies monopolize all the genre then there won''t be competition -> bad games. + All of us can find something else to do.

Surprising that noone has patented Player..

I said it first!! You owe me $1 per sold game that has a player! oh and Character too


Odie.. I''ll take a look at it after I''ve slept and post a bit less.. er.. well.. I''ll post something better

Thanks.

I think you need to study the patents in greater detail, patent titles can often be misleading and often do not give an accurate description of what the patent protects. I advise you not to look at Appendix C without previously having studied the chapter which discusses the USPTO patent classification.

Just like in the regular software industry, it is considered best practice to not look at patents at all. Otherwise you may be hit with knowingly infringing and have to pay triple damages.

Oh here is a perfect example. I was quickly scrolling through your paper and noticed what looked like might be some patent descriptions at the end. Guess what. I immediately closed your document and will never look at it again. DELETED.

BTW. You mentioned about how Valve has some valuable tech and it might be a good idea for them to patent it. Well. I used to work there and I am still friends with a bunch of the engineers. Knowing my friends, they would get extremely pissed off if the company went for any. They are able to get a lot of information from misc papers, articles, or peers for free. What right does someone have to take that free information and just turn around and block others (or even the original authors) from using a variation of it.

We achieve by standing on the shoulders of other. DO NOT PISS ON THEM.

Please don''t take any of this as a personal attack against you. Patents just make me MAD.

I just invented a way of calculating per-pixel diffuse lighting:
For each pixel:
- Get vector from pixel to light (L)
- Get surface normal at the pixel''s position (N)
- Get diffuse color for the pixel (Kd)
- Calculate light attenuation with help of |L| (Ka)
- pixel_color = Ka*Kd*(L dot N)

I already have a patent pending for this method. Don''t use it without my permission!!

Billy, I am certainly not trying to piss anyone off.

I briefly mention Half-life 2 as an EXAMPLE of how complex and ambitious modern development projects have become. This, combined with a number of other factors, could create incentives for developers and publishers to patent game IP to a larger extent. I am simply trying to predict possible future scenarios.

"We achieve by standing on the shoulders of others". I am very well aware of the fact that the game industry relies on sequential innovation, and as in the software industry in general, there has been a generous attitude towards sharing information and using each other’s ideas through “inspiration”. This makes patents a particularly charged subject. But is it really so charged it cannot even be approached?

Patents are such a joke, it''s all smoke and mirrors.

Here is an example from ages past. Moog (a maker of electronic synthesizers) had a patent on it''s filter design. Arp, a competing company, took the design and encased the filter circuits in a glue like compound so it was really really hard to figure out they had stole the patent design :-) Haha. Eventually moog was able to scrape off all that glue and figure out they had stole the patent.

The good thing is after the lawsuit Arp created their own filter design which is now legendary in the analog syntheizer business.

And the moral of the story is that all those patent have now been freed, but there isn''t much of an analog synth business these days :-)

Patents are for suits :-) Bah humbug. Hey I realize you gotta make a living kid...

quote: Original post by Odie76

"We achieve by standing on the shoulders of others". I am very well aware of the fact that the game industry relies on sequential innovation, and as in the software industry in general, there has been a generous attitude towards sharing information and using each other’s ideas through “inspiration”. This makes patents a particularly charged subject. But is it really so charged it cannot even be approached?

Considering how long patents last, we''d just be able to add high score tables to our games now if it were patented. In a few years, we''ll be able to use 4 colors in our games and hit points.

Moogs are awesome. www.atomandhispackage.com