Games

OH MAN I GET SO EXCITED WHEN COMPANIES PATENT GAME MECHANICS OH BOY GOD I LOVE THAT SHIT SO MUCH MMMMM I LOVE ME SOME EXCLUSIVITY

fuck you Sony.

Edit: Sony might actually run into some issues with prior art in this case. For one thing, based on the article it sounds vague enough to conflict with game saves in general; however even from the standpoint of being able to load from any point in the game, regardless of saves, even that has been done before. For an example, Factorio's demo/replay system allows you to load a demo from a save that you've enabled it on, scrub through the demo to a specific moment in time, and then save that moment as a new save to continue from.

You guys recreated save states

In a new patent filed by Sony earlier this month, it was revealed that the tech titan plans to bring about a feature allowing users to cherry-pick exact moments from which they can replay a game. It’s a feature that would empower users to track back through a campaign and select a specific moment in time to change a decision, re-experience something epic, or recount their steps, without needing to replay entire chapters – or the whole game.

You can copyright loading auto saves?

So it'll never exist.

Fuck software patents.

Ah shit...

Valve was working on this feature for the Steam Deck. You can already save, close the game on the Deck, and restore the save on your PC, but Valve developers explained quite a few times they actually wanted you to simply put the Deck to sleep and start the game on the PC in the exact same frame you've left off. Which is indeed a massive challenge, and would certainly require some sort of intermediary "loading" screen, but it would still be cool. They even had a few internal tests with such a feature.

But now it's a Sony patent? Zero chance of this coming out for the Deck.

Waoh, someone invented frequent incremental auto-save !

I did this all the tine with SNES roms in emulators, you could even fast-forward in them.

The patent seems like bullshit, and will be easily challenged by any prior art. At first when I read the title I thought they were going to patent something nifty, like use CPU native VM support to simulate what emulators did and truly save and return to any point possible, but it's just a concept that has a hefty amount of prior art already substantiated.

I don't like this, more because I can see how this would be a route to making games shittier long-term by forcing you into a perpetual subscription to the game you bought.

Like, I can see how it'd be useful and fun. But I can also see how, if this new type of save takes off, game design would change so you would no longer be allowed to have old school local saves that don't require an internet connection. I think my alarm bells go off because you COULD work this into a local single-player game experience, but the way it's constantly tied to streaming in the article suggests they won't bother.

So it smells like bait--they'll do something cool, but also pretend it could only be implemented with this attachment to streaming and subscriptions.

They invented Autosaves. Good job?