A patent has seen the light of day that Sony Interactive Entertainment wants to change the world with, but we don’t know how much chance it has of doing so if it even starts using the contents of said patent…

In April, Sony registered the patent in question for a system that would process disruptive, harmful behaviour in multiplayer games and take appropriate action against harassing players. The trademark, published in September, highlights that online bullying has unfortunately become a “growing trend” in online gaming. These players are commonly referred to as trolls or even griefers.

They have also been officially described as: “One who deliberately irritates, annoys, and harasses other players within the video game. In some instances, the disruptive player will use aspects of the video game in unintended ways to disrupt the normal play of the video game.” And since games today are nowadays taking action against offenders based on manual reports, Sony wants to automate the process by having the system detect disturbing events and signs.

Again the jargon over-complicates everything: “The method also includes applying a behavioural designation to players in the online gaming system. The behavioural designation indicates whether or not a player is verified as responsible for one or more of the identified disruptive behaviour events. The method also includes generating current real-time player behaviour demographic data for a specified game space using the behavioural designations applied to players associated with the specified game space.”

Later, the patent talks about the acceptable level of the behaviour in question. The idea behind the system is not to immediately and automatically apply the banhammer on the players, but rather to discourage them from doing so by the restrictions that apply and straighten out the process of dealing with such players.

There may be a rationale behind it, but it could also be argued, and perhaps this could be called going overboard, but the Sony would thus keep an eye on everyone.

Source: PSL