After several years of trying, Warner Bros has finally secured a patent for the Nemesis system featured in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The Nemesis system, essentially, procedurally generates a name, rank and personality traits for powerful enemies, and if any enemy managed to kill the player, that enemy would be promoted and given those characteristics. It was widely praised upon Shadow of Mordor's release for being an innovative system that allowed players to form a connection with relatively minor characters. Now, Warner Bros may be able to stop other developers from implementing a version of it in their games.

The move has proven controversial in the gaming community. Among a slew of negative comments regarding the patent, some prominent voices have spoken up as well. Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone and John Wick Hex, Tweeted the following: "This is really gross, especially for a franchise that built its brilliant nemesis system on top of a whole heap of mechanics replicated from other games. As all games do. Because that's how culture and creativity works. Be a better neighbor, WB."

Critic Jim Sterling compared it to Namco Bandai's patent on gameplay during loading screens, also expressing concern about the way it can stifle the creative process: "[The patent] expired in 2015 but we still don't see games really do the idea. It's because a 17-year void of creativity happened and nothing was built upon," they said. "By the time the patent expired, the very idea was more or less a relic nobody bothered with because they'd never been allowed."

This isn't the first time a publisher has patented a gameplay mechanic. EA holds the patent on dialogue wheels as they look in the Mass Effect series, and Nintendo holds the patent on gameplay measuring a player's sanity (from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem). Of course, there are examples of other games, such as the Amnesia series or Darkest Dungeon, factoring sanity loss into its gameplay with no legal trouble from Nintendo, so a patent doesn't necessarily mean no other developers can experiment with the idea. But it is an option for Warner Bros now if they so choose, and that's got people worried.

Source

 

[ZeroT21]

Imagine patenting just the ''first person camera view'' for any fps game

 

[NNate]

Imagine patenting just the ''first person camera view'' for any fps game

Yeah, someone missed a great money grab, probably kicking themselves now

 

[Kwyjor]

The game is a few years old now. Doesn't seem like that idea really caught on elsewhere in the meantime.

Well, once they've filed the patent application, anyone who copies the idea is risking that they'll have to pay damages if the patent is granted.

 

[KingVamp]

I'm surprised that more games haven't tired putting their own spin on it. I mean, it basically a twist on level scaling.

That said, yeah, this is pretty ridiculous.

 

[astrocapsule]

If I don't recall wrongly, SEGA patented the usage of a giant ass arrow above the thing you are controlling in a game with the release of Crazy Taxi.
That's why we don't see such exact same mechanic in games anymore.

 

[FAST6191]

If I don't recall wrongly, SEGA patented the usage of a giant ass arrow above the thing you are controlling in a game with the release of Crazy Taxi.
That's why we don't see such exact same mechanic in games anymore.

If we are continuing with the sins of Sega when it comes to patents.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...do_defeat_one_of_segas_most_ludicrous_patents

Viewpoint change button, since defeated but will want to remember that one.

 

[Darksabre72]

this is really bad news, especially when other companies try to follow suit this idea

 

[diggeloid]

Did you somehow miss the torrents of fury about all the microtransactions in the sequel? (They were eventually removed.)

The core game was still great. You can't say the same about many book/film adaptations.

 

[eyeliner]

If we are continuing with the sins of Sega when it comes to patents.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...do_defeat_one_of_segas_most_ludicrous_patents

Viewpoint change button, since defeated but will want to remember that one.

Wasn't Nintendo who patented the directional pad?
Hypocrites...

 

[FAST6191]

The core game was still great. You can't say the same about many book/film adaptations.

Films. Maybe.

Books. Actually there are quite a few and it is no great surprise when one does become good, indeed I would say books often lend themselves into adaptation to a game far more readily.

 

[HellaJvke]

OK, if they can patent this, one could patent a controller design with a stick added to it that's meant to be controlled with your nether regions.

I mean, what's next? They gonna patent trading cards? Insulin variants? Wireless input methods with no latency? If anything Logitech should do that with their Lightspeed tech that they hype up for both their KBs and Mice!

hey Ashen one...
if you look up the first ever patent it was george washingtons patent for "pot Ash" literally patenting burned down trees
in a sense patents are a forgery of upholdings.

An individual can Never Own an idea, but they certainly can try
and if your idea seems congruent enough they will muraud and seek to destroy in the name of their capital benefit.

The WB conglomerate is... just that a conglomerate

 

[deltagalone]

Wasn't Nintendo who patented the directional pad?
Hypocrites...

Wasnt nintendo d-pad inventor ? as far as i know they are the 1st to make use it, others made improvement to it but its a nintendo product.

 

[eyeliner]

Wasnt nintendo d-pad inventor ? as far as i know they are the 1st to make use it, others made improvement to it but its a nintendo product.

Precisely. They patented something completely necessary, stifling innovation.

 

[Kwyjor]

If I don't recall wrongly, SEGA patented the usage of a giant ass arrow above the thing you are controlling in a game with the release of Crazy Taxi.
That's why we don't see such exact same mechanic in games anymore.

That patent expired in November 2018, so it's not stopping people anymore.

hey Ashen one...
if you look up the first ever patent it was george washingtons patent for "pot Ash" literally patenting burned down trees
in a sense patents are a forgery of upholdings.

For starters, that was the first US patent. The US wasn't the first to come up with the idea of patenting.
https://uh.edu/engines/epi2002.htm

Secondly, George Washington signed the patent, but it certainly wasn't his patent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hopkins_(inventor)

And thirdly, the inventor wasn't just "burning down trees". He apparently found a new and better way to burn ashes in a furnace with a particular design to generate a specific result.
https://suiter.com/first-u-s-patent-issued-today-in-1790/

They patented something completely necessary, stifling innovation.

And in the process of patenting, they had to let everyone know exactly how they did it.

The whole point is that people would be discouraged from investing in research and development – which can be tremendously expensive, considering how many bad ideas you have to go through sometimes to come up with one good idea – if everyone else would be able to immediately copy their products without having to make the same investment.

 

[1B51004]

Critic Jim Sterling compared it to Namco Bandai's patent on gameplay during loading screens, also expressing concern about the way it can stifle the creative process: "[The patent] expired in 2015 but we still don't see games really do the idea. It's because a 17-year void of creativity happened and nothing was built upon," they said. "By the time the patent expired, the very idea was more or less a relic nobody bothered with because they'd never been allowed."​

i feel as though that another reason that no one really bothers with interactive loading screens is that (for the most part) the time window for loading screens nowadays are so small on most consoles and games that it only takes a few seconds between the screen and the game. With Ratchet and Clank PS5 we've seen that there's no apparent loading screens between gameplay.
but yeah wrong topic. i haven't even heard of the nemesis system until now, but I don't know how well it's going to go

 

[relauby]

i feel as though that another reason that no one really bothers with interactive loading screens is that (for the most part) the time window for loading screens nowadays are so small on most consoles and games that it only takes a few seconds between the screen and the game. With Ratchet and Clank PS5 we've seen that there's no apparent loading screens between gameplay.
but yeah wrong topic. i haven't even heard of the nemesis system until now, but I don't know how well it's going to go

He acknowledged that in follow-up Tweets, but it's sort of beside the point. The patent was approved in the late nineties and didn't expire until the middle of the last generation. That was a lot of time with a lot of long loading screens, and people weren't able to do anything with it all that time. And there was also enough time between it expiring and the new consoles (six years) for it to have been brought back near the end of the last cycle.

 

[seany1990]

doesnt phasmophobia infringe on that nintendo sanity patent?

 

[osaka35]

What gave you the idea that you can't legally own a recipe? You can totally get a patent on a recipe. The problems are that 1) You have to let everyone know your recipe in sufficient detail that they can reproduce it, and 2) After twenty years everyone will be able to do whatever they want with it. (And of course the recipe has to be completely new and non-obvious.)

I'm going off US law, so it might be different elsewhere. you can own rights to, say, a collection of recipes, or a book of recipes. but not a recipe itself. it's just a list of ingredients and you can't own it. there are limits to what you can claim as yours, this one is one of the more well-known. Some try and own a unique method of production of recipes, but that's not the recipe.

I suppose their argument is this is more like a book than a recipe, though it feels more a type of recipe type they're trying to protect as their own, rather than a codified book.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

If I'll ever make my own game, I ain't giving no crap about any patent or what, I'll make the game the way I want to.
If the some SoaB with their head up their ass comes bitching at me, I'll just remove the game... 'cus, welp, by then it'll prolly be everywhere online on pirate sites or what, lol.
Don't care about the money, I just wanna create something that people will like and I can proudly say "I made dis", lol.

 

[chrisrlink]

if that happens imagine if nintendo patents Monster catching/taming rpg's patenting systems/games is one thing but you screw over devs who has great ideas by patenting concepts/ entire genre's for games