We’ve got a new patent to discuss today, and this time it’s not some a filing for another fancy cellphone airbag. Surprisingly the folks over at Nintendo managed to win the patent for a “Massively Single-Player Online Game”. If you’re wondering what it could mean, let us break it down for you. It’s basically a single game where a user’s actions change the world for him/herself – and everybody else who is playing the same game.
It’s basically all the benefits of an online world, without the hassles of having to interact with real people. You react with the result of their actions. So let’s say a player finds a pile of building materials to build a house, the next player won’t find those materials, but they’ll get to see a finished house instead. I would imagine the same rules would apply if one player let a monster out of a cage and didn’t kill it, it would probably find its way into other player’s games as well.
According to the patent, “Those who want to play games that are more dynamic, not-based on Al and not-pre-scripted like multiplayer games, however, don’t want to ‘deal’ with other people, appreciate the privacy it provides.” Sounds like a good idea – all the randomness of an online world but without having to deal with “noobs” or player-killers (PKs). It’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo applies this in its games (assuming that they do make use of the patent).