Patent For Mini-Games Within Loading Screens Expires; Explosion In Better Game Loading Screens Forecasted

from the promote-this dept

Fri, Dec 4th 2015 3:41pm — Timothy Geigner

Whenever we discuss patents here, it's always useful to restate that the purpose of patent law generally is to promote creativity and innovation such that the public has greater access to novel and useful inventions. That the application of the patent system has been perverted from this original purpose ought to be obvious to everyone, which is why the mantra of patent protectionism by industry, often large industry, has always had the air of religiosity to me. Without patents, no creation would be made. Without patents, small inventors would be pilfered by monied interests. Without patents, we'd be without life-saving medicine. So goes the mantra of those prostrating themselves before restrictionism, repeated over and over again lest their imagined livelihood be taken away by the heathens who point out every counter-example.

Those counter-examples abound, of course, and we typically talk about them in terms of generic medicines that proliferate after a patent expires, or when life-changing technology is suddenly available to a wider public when access to it is relieved from restriction. But lesser examples can be useful to illustrate this as well. One such example is an absolutely asinine patent that had been granted long ago for mini-games being used within software loading screens. That patent recently expired and nobody is even pretending like this won't suddenly mean the proliferation of much less tedious loading screens.

For twenty years, Namco Bandai has held patent US 5718632 A, which has given them ownership of the idea of a loading screen minigame. On November 27 (this Friday), that patent expires. This is a big deal! For two decades, companies that wanted to keep players busy during load times (like Ridge Racer’s amazing Galaga) either had to pay Namco, find ways around it (as EA’s FIFA series has) or...give up and go back to writing a ton of boring tips and lore screens for people to read.

Is this really a big deal? No. Also, yes, absolutely. No because having a mini-game inside of another game's loading screen isn't going to save a life or ease the suffering of the masses. But yes, too, because it's an easily understood example of how broken the promise the patent system made all those years ago has become. Already there are plans to do a "game jam" for loading screens, where people will get together and spurt their creativity, now that what was once banned, is finally allowed. If the patent system worked on its original premise, this shouldn't be a thing. The patenting of mini-games in loading screens should have resulted in the use of that concept throughout gaming. It hasn't. If it had, a game jam built around building that very thing wouldn't be necessary.

Loading Screen Jam's "theme" is creating interactive loading screens (or anything that infringes on the abstract) and defiling the patent that held back game design for so many years! Create games/interactive material based on infringing the now-defunct patent in any way possible!

It's yet another example of the reality of the patent system working in nearly exact reverse to its stated purpose. Once the patent expires, the public benefits.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: games, patents, screen loading
Companies: namco bandai

15 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Shill, 4 Dec 2015 @ 3:55pm

Restricting mini-games encourages game makers to make games load faster lest players get bored. Therefore this patent was good. Now all these games will be cluttered with mini games which will make game makers think it's ok to take forever loading games and these mini-games will slow down load time since they take up CPU cycles and memory. Game makers should focus more on improving the actual game instead of being distracted by stupid pointless mini-games and wasting their time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 4:11pm

Re:
I'm inclined to say it's kind of a trade-off. Generally speaking, minigames are used sparingly. I doubt the next fallout game is going to include whack-a-raider every single time you walk into a house.

What these minigames are great for, though, is situations where long load times are unavoidable. Between turns in a big game of civilization, while waiting for other players to load into a game of League of Legends.

I doubt people are going to just throw a minigame onto every single loading screen, because that's just plain annoying.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Dec 2015 @ 4:14pm

I'm working on a new patent
My new patent involves having a micro game you can play while waiting for the mini game to load to play while you wait for the main game to load.

That way you are never waiting for a game!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Socrates, 4 Dec 2015 @ 4:19pm

Austin Meyer and the patent trolls
The trolls attack inventors, with impunity.

http://www.x-plane.com/x-world/lawsuit/

Austin Meyer fights them as best as he can. His experience with patent trolls is quite telling. I recommend viewing his documentary also.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Cowherd, 4 Dec 2015 @ 8:29pm

Remember Invade-a-Load... in the 1987? On the damn c64?
Extra-infuriating because, see, we actually had popular loader minigames years before the stupid patent in the first place.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Capt ICE Enforcer, 5 Dec 2015 @ 6:01am

Reviews of games
I hate this, what am I suppose to do when the mini games from the load screen are better than the actual game itself. Am I to rate it higher. What if the mini game is so good I want to buy the game just to play it. I do miss DigDug.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rekrul, 5 Dec 2015 @ 6:06am

Re: Remember Invade-a-Load... in the 1987? On the damn c64?
Extra-infuriating because, see, we actually had popular loader minigames years before the stupid patent in the first place.

Gaming has come full-circle. In the 80s, developers put minigames in the loader for C64 tape games because they took a painfully long time to load. Then games went through a period where level loading was reduced to mere seconds by hard drives. And now we're back at the stage where games can take so long to load that people need to be entertained during the process.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2015 @ 6:40am

Patent Binary? You can patent the English language if you want, and get the government to back you up on it. That way I won't have a need to plead the fifth. Just need to brush up on my signing, unless of course you have a patent on that too, and a vendetta against the deaf as well. It truly is a wonder we ever made it out of the stone age. Guess I should file for copyright on the game name "Avarice & Greed".
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joel, 5 Dec 2015 @ 7:01am

The article is missing a though
It's probably just too clear for the author at this point, but I think it needs to be said to preempt the typical counter-argument, which may be applicable in some cases but clearly isn't here:

Namco Bandai didn't need the extra incentive of a patent to "invent" minigames in loading screens. Even if they didn't have the prospect of exclusive rights for loading screen games they probably would have added it to their game anyway. It would have been worth it to make a better overall game. Just basic competition would have been incentive enough, in this case.

This is a common theme for patents which should have been thrown out for either prior art or obviousness.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2015 @ 10:17am

Re: Reviews of games
Does the minigame give you the option of not being interrupted when the loading of the actual game is done? If not is there a way to slow down the loading process?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kal Zekdor (profile), 5 Dec 2015 @ 10:58am

Re:
Loading times aren't CPU bound, they're I/O bound. SSDs have made loading times for all but the heaviest of assets nigh instantaneous.

There's very little that a developer can do to shorten loading times other than using fewer game assetd. They could use real-time compression, trading CPU for Memory, but that hasn't been in style since the '80s. Sometimes JIT (Just-In-Time) loading (or procedural generation) of assets can work, spooling up assets soon to be required in the background, but that's a difficult technique, and doesn't work for every type of game. Another technique is just to load all the assets into memory at startup, having an initial long load instead of having smaller incremental loads interrupting play, but obviously that can only work for smaller games.

All in all, hardware is going to solve the problem, not software. Loading screen minigames aren't going to matter, one way or the other.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Digitari, 5 Dec 2015 @ 2:54pm

Re:
I dunno, I think "Avarice & Greed" is a law firm. You maybe should check trademarks on this
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 5 Dec 2015 @ 5:29pm

You shouldn't be able to patent an idea. You should be able to patent an invention - an implementation of an idea. In other words... I shouldn't be allowed to patent "mouse traps" but I should be allowed to patent my specific construction of a mouse trap.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 7 Dec 2015 @ 8:00am

Or...
For two decades, companies that wanted to keep players busy during load times (like Ridge Racer’s amazing Galaga) either had to pay Namco, find ways around it (as EA’s FIFA series has) or...give up and go back to writing a ton of boring tips and lore screens for people to read.

Or in the case of Bungie... nothing. You get to just stare at the screen and wonder how long it will take to load.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2015 @ 3:05am

I'm surprised that there wasn't prior art to invalidate the original patent. Back in the 1980s I remember playing a space invaders game in a sprite on a CBM-64 while the game was loading...
[ link to this | view in thread ]