Link: https://www.techspot.com/news/113909-microsoft-patent-describes-game-advertising-triggered-boss-fights.html

Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a "credit"

good thing they patented this shit, it can die with them now

The shareholder will love that
Literally everyone else, though…

ROFL Oh hell no, that would get me to never buy a game with this feature enabled. I would wait and figure out if said feature were present.

Most people would count Black mirror as a dystopian science fiction nightmare. Microslop on the other hand saw “15 million credits” and pitched it to their shareholders.

Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a "credit"

As a millennial, I’ve watched the rise and fall of many things. Never thought I’d see the entire fall of gaming and so soon following its rise.

While ad free implies being on some sort of game pass (fuck that now as it is), I would sooner go back to board games before ever even considering a game with this included. Companies buying virtual billboards was gross enough.

Big props to M$ for patenting this so when they inevitably fuck it up, it’s off the table for others.

Makes you wonder given the timing of announcing every tier of game pass will now include (very) limited monthly cloud gaming hours. I think I saw ultimate would include 15 h/mo. With yet unannounced pricing on how much an extra hour would cost, what if ads end up being their solution… 🤔

If Microsoft lets the patent sit idle and refuses to license it to others, it would be a very good thing for a few years. Let's see what happens, though.

board games

Don’t give them any ideas for trying to make persistent ads in those too. Monopoly would ironically be the first.

The patent system is broken. This is such a simple concept, even if a terrible one that sucks.

You’re trying to tell me the countless reskins aren’t just ads?

With some of the shit people put up with nowadays in games, they would probably swallow this up too, in some capacity.

me getting physical Microsoft junk mail when I try playing chess by correspondence

Why have you done this.

Capitalism knows no sentimentality.

Reminder: mobile games have had ad = benefit for over a decade. However, this sounds like the reverse (get a credit = no ads or ad free time).

Roblox has had integrated ads for some time, typically diegetic ads on in game billboards. Some of these integrations go less noticed because of the parallel to the real world & they aren’t disruptive of gameplay flow.

Microsoft is welcome to try this pattern, but it’ll likely require developers to be heavily incented to do so. Given that MS just downsized, meaning they have less first parties & have rightfully angered some pockets of the game development world, I feel like their only option here is lots of money or force the loop. Forcing this loop will damage the total addressable market, unless it’s used for F2P games.

Long story, short: they may be patenting this, but they have a long, uphill battle to get this to work in any sort of paid, AAA game/product. They would need an amazing draw to pull people passed it, and a lot of their brands don’t have the draw they used to (see Halo Infinite).

Indie games are booming lately, if you think you're witnessing the fall of gaming you're simply looking in the wrong place.

This is a patent application. Many applications are filed for terrible and/or fundamentally unpatentable ideas. Even by huge companies.

Please drink verification can.

Oh, then wait and see if game has advertising tripe in game and make sure not to buy. Got it.

It's your 30th boss run. As you fuck up your sixth dodge roll in a row, the Troll picks up your character. He roars over the screams of your avatar as he crushes it's ribs in its massive fist.

Then, as he raises you high over head, and opens wide to chomp down on your head, the actions stops. The Troll turns to the camera and smiles, showing off brilliant pearly whites. "Colgate is recommended by 9/10 dentists.", the troll effuses over the screaming.

A text box appears.

'To proceed, type the number of dentists Colgate is recommended by, followed by this random number "N".'

"to deliver last blow to the final boss, please watch these 10 minutes of ads. failure to do so will restore the boss to full health"

Yeah, I was wondering if they are trying to use USPTO incompetence to destroy the mobile gaming industry.

and those indie companies will get bigger, become corporatized, and continue the cycle.

Just like the ones before them did, just like the ones after them will.

15 years ago and accurate as fuck

Both can be true

The good thing is that creating a game is a task a person or a small team can accomplish even with non-AAA money, and there are many people out there who want to create something. So even if some of those indies become corrupted, there will always be more people out there who want to build their vision.

And tbh, if from this moment on only crap came out, we already have decades of great games to play - i for my part would never run out of games until the day i die even if i stopped adding stuff to my library - i am sitting on ca. 37000 titles at the moment. If the average time to complete is around 20 hours, that's around 83 years of continuous gaming, much more than my estimated remaining lifetime.

yeah, anyone can make a game. that game will probably be a slop generic asset flip game, but still technically a game.

to make a good game takes years, and money, and either knowledge or time available to be spent pursuing that knowledge..while also working an actual job to actually pay for all the bills for everyday life, in addition to what the game needs.

I mean, if it just stopped at the troll saying "...9/10 dentists...." That would be pretty fucking funny

Put ads in my games and I’ll stop playing your games. Simple as. Plenty of indies out there are more deserving of my time.

I think it's just the fall of the industry as we know it. I don't think gaming is going away anytime soon. But I do think we are about to see a very different industry in a few years. It probably won't look like it ever really has before. A massive indie space, with sparse few AAA titles.

I'm sure this has been done before. stupid web clicker city builder or whatever that if you watch advert you et more in game credits.
It might not be exactly the same but surely not novel enough to be patentable, prior art. Or in this case prior twat.

Wealth doesn't trickle down, but losses do. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies' abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.

This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.

Yes. That's how art works.

Most musicians, including many bands that fill stadiums and go on world tours, pay the bills with regular full-time jobs and do all of their band stuff in their spare time. It's similar for artists, authors, etc.

A really good game takes years of hard work. It can take surprisingly little money; a small team driven by passion can be very efficient. But it does take effort. And sure, not everyone can be Tynan Sylvester or ConcernedApe or Pixel or Team Cherry; most tiny indie games aren't genre-shaping mega hits.

But they don't have to. There's plenty of small games out there that are just good and that's good enough. The idea of even just a hundred people playing one's game and being entertained is enticing enough for thousands of developers to sink hours and hours of their spare time into.

Will there be a bazillion lame asset flips in the future? Yes, just like there have always been lame derivative bands, shitty overhyped artists, terrible indie movies, and drivel-slinging hack authors.

Just like there have always been shitty AA and AAA games, for that matter. 90% of everything is crap. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of gems hiding in between all the chaff.

(And while I'm at it: While making a game does requires a lot of knowledge, that knowledge can be acquired along the way. The original Cave Story was a one-man project and Pixel certainly didn't start out as a professional programmer/artist/composer/screenplay author.
Learning how to do all that is part of the fun for some people.)

Farmville all over again.

USPTO changed its rules in 2013; prior art only counts if it was patented first. This is why Nintendo has been trying to patent stuff other companies are doing that is similar to their games (eg PalWorld).

Part of me wishes Nintendo was doing this to lose on purpose so there is precedent to not use this against them in the future, but I’ve become far too pessimistic for a “good-guy Nintendo” arc…

I am assuming this means they are planning on adding a "free with ads" tier to Xbox Cloud Game Streaming. Which doesn't really bother me that much if its a free tier. But if they add this to paid tiers or full games that would probably lose them a lot of goodwill that Asha seems to be pretty keen on regaining lately.

Indies, romhacks, fangames, recompilations, mods, etc can extend the life of any game nowadays.

As usual, it's going to be only for the free, or "cheaper" tier at first, then it will creep up to the other tiers. We've seen this happen time and again.

Oh good. I was only 98% sure I was done buying consoles forever. It's good to really know.

I might make exceptions for consoles/devices that run linux off the shelf. (I want to get a steam frame, ok?)

I was going to add that the avatar was already dead, and it was your screaming the troll was talking over, because this is the 30th time you'd heard the ad

And retro games to emulate.

Just get an emulation handheld. With Steam offering ARM support through a translation layer, a strong one can even run a surprising array of PC games these days. My Retroid Pocket Flip 2 isn't even that nice as far as these things go, and it plays just about any 2D game I've tried and a lot of 3D from the '00s and early '10s, later if they don't press limits. You can also attach them to TVs and use normal controllers, including multiplayer.

Maybe your standards are too high? Most indie games I've played lately have been very good: Librarian, The Artisan of Glimmith, and Kabuto Park were the most recent 3

i think a popup will just show in the middle of the fight obscuring everything. "you have alloted 30minutes of boss battle, please watch ads to continue"

lands the final hit against Margit in Elden Ring

"Tarnished... Have you heard about Burger King's new Loaded Jalepeno Whopper? Now only $6.99."

The patent seems to be for PC games though I’m sure it would apply to both.

THIS is what the new head of gaming came up with to save xbox? Lol.

So many games on sale I want to play, backlog infinite

Is this an ad for Steam? /s

That one black mirror episode where you had limited credits to skip ads and the forced you to keep your eyes open to watch the unskippable ad if you didn’t have the credits. Enough said.

Seriously, what the hell are they thinking? Did they not come up with anything better? Oh well, now we definitely know we’re living in a dystopia at least.