Is this really a problem for people - not knowing about new game releases? Especially for things you may already be interested in watching outside of a video game? If someone is a fan of sports, racing, etc. it seems they can find new releases in those genres pretty easily already.
The article mentions creating a custom game or in-game items based on the content… Wow, great - more in-game hats. And I bet that generated game is going to be top quality.
Yes, or rather its a problem for publishers trying to get their product noticed. Marketing in the past decade has fast become the most expensive part of making things, just getting people to know your thing exists, yeah its hard.
It’s not a problem for people, people don’t care. Companies do.
On the other side of things, it’s why we have so many sequels and franchises now, it’s much easier to market franchises. No one can make a Call of Duty killer, primarily because even if you make a game people would love, it’s hard to get people to even know.
And even if they did know about it they wouldn’t have room next to CoD on their harddrive
It’s also arguably a bigger problem for the bad publishers like Activision, who have been trashing their own reputations for so long that even if they buy a huge “World Premiere” ad spot at the Game Awards, once I see it’s an Activision game, my brain just automatically turns off any interest I might have had in a game, because I know that even if the trailer makes it look interesting, it will ultimately probably be a disappointment due to greedy management. There are plenty of good indie games to play, and if and when Activision does publish a good game, I’m much more likely to believe word of mouth of the people I trust, than the recommendations of publishers, who are generally just out to push a $90 deluxe edition preorder of whatever is coming out next week.
Letting anyone with a “horse in the race” do this would be silly. It would end up like how MSoft recommends you Edge when you interact with another browser, but even more stupid; “Hey you are watching Resident Evil 4! That means you like action games! I have a great one to suggest: CoD MW3!”
Also if you read the thing it gets even sillier
uses that data to dynamically recommend a video game for the user to play, generate a video game for the user to play, or modify content of the video game being played, as the user experiences the video stream or broadcast video.
This has the same DNA of those claims that video game NFTs would be magical things that would be shared between games without any issue. Is it too much to ask that the discourse about the industry is somewhat rooted in actual immediate reality? “oh it sees that you are watching FFXIV and generates a new dungeon in WoW based on what’s happening on stream” like no. Come on. Dial it back to the current decade.
More specifically, there is a need to contextually integrate video games being concurrently experienced with a video stream
No. There isn’t. Nobody wants to be “recommended” something else while watching their stream of choice. If you want to use streams to bombard me with your “hey hey our game just came out” there is already a way to do it, it’s called “pay top streamers to pretend your new game is the best thing for an hour”.
Also I was checking what my man has patented in the past and his level of taste and priorities is “Wanted to make a Silent Hill Ascension before Silent Hill Ascension”:
Systems and methods for enabling audience participation in multi-player video game play sessions
Patent number: 10596471
Abstract: The present specification describes systems and methods that enable non-players to participate as spectators in online video games and, through a collective voting mechanism, determine the occurrence of certain events or contents of the gameplay in real time. Game event options are generated and presented to non-players. A specific one of the game event options is then selected based on a collective vote of the non-players. Once selected, the specific one or more of the game event options are then generated as actual gaming events and incorporated into a video game stream that is transmitted to the players as part of the gameplay session. In this manner, non-players may be able to directly affect the course of gameplay.
Type: Grant
Filed: August 3, 2018
Date of Patent: March 24, 2020Like, nah. Go take your cafeteria napkin ideas somewhere else you buffoon.
I would hate it if games changed based on what they thought I wanted - I want to choose my content but if the content morphs underneath my hands according to a marketing algorithm then it’s not respecting my choice. There seems to be some assumption that each person enjoys exactly one emotion.
I’m pretty sure people can like more than one thing. Like if I’m playing Resident Evil and some algo decides that because I watched When Harry Met Sally last week, it should replace the zombies with awkward dates 🤣.
The description of the patent makes it seem like twitch chat integration, which is already a thing in a lot of games like Cities: Skylines.
Wait you are totally right, I thought it was merely about big time stuff like where the story goes next, but when you look in the details, it is so wide that it is also basically a patent for twitch crowd control style integration:
Optionally, the plurality of game event options include an occurrence of one or more earthquakes, meteor showers, storms, rain, wind, fires, lightning, or other natural disasters.
Optionally, the plurality of game event options include a placement or existence of armor, weapons, treasure, or other resources available to specific players in the gameplay session.
and so on with more of this type of stuff.
Uuuuh didn’t Crowd Control launch before the filing of that patent? I’m kinda lost here.
I found this article about Twitch and Warp World, the company that developed Crowd Control.
This particular bit is interesting to me:
Warp World reported that in October 2017, the month they launched, over a million Bits passed through the Crowd Control Extension.
Damn I must be misunderstanding something then because that makes it sound like my man gets to be called an inventor and activision gets to potentially benefit financially for what amounts to describing in legalese the utility after someone else did all the real technical work of making it a reality
which would be kinda fucked
Gaming NFTs are a great idea. If I’m playing chess I want to be able to transfer over my items from other games, like a portal gun, to enhance the experience. NFT technology will permanently improve the gaming industry.
Damn, I’d get not a single recommendation. That’d be wild. 🤣
It is absolutely incredible how video games publishers will do anything to not publish new video games. Just doing any hair brained boondoggle that comes to their oxygen deprived brains.
The title sounds like a MBA talking out of his arse. It doesn’t have any value whatsoever.
Advertisements? Targeted to individual people?
Brilliant!
Activisions’ executives should be fired.
Privacy issues aside, this is such a fundamentally stupid idea. As if you aren’t a current or prospective player of games you follow, anyway.
“Wow, personalized ads? That’s brilliant! Let’s patent it” said an Activision exec who had been in cryogenic sleep since 1995
Things change so fast these companies won’t keep up. They late.
