Blizzard Has Applied for an Overwatch ‘Play of the Game’ Patent

Blizzard has applied for a patent for its ‘Play of the Game’ highlights system, it has been revealed. The component, which marks out and replays the best action of an Overwatch game upon the match’s conclusion, is one of the title’s most popular features. However, the company’s 2016 application has still not been reviewed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent may still be up in the air, but Blizzard has clearly thought that Overwatch would benefit from cornering the market on the post-game moments system. Not much else in gaming can match the little tingle you get when your name crops up on-screen for that Play of the Game, so it’s a smart move on their part.

If you want to get really technical, to see what would (and wouldn’t) be able to be seen elsewhere if the patent goes through, the Play of the Game system is described in the attached USPTO documents as follows:

“In an approach, a game server records events that occur within a match of a video game played using a plurality of game clients. After the match has concluded, the game server scores the events according to a plurality of criteria corresponding a plurality of play of the game categories. A sliding window is passed over the events in a number of increments.”

“During each increment, the score for each event that falls within the sliding window is aggregated for each of the categories. The game server then selects a play of the game category and determines the top aggregated score for that category. Once determined, the game server sends one or more instructions to the game clients which causes the game clients to display a replay of the events that occurred during the time window increment corresponding to the top aggregated score for the selected category.”

Or, as I like to put it: lots of kills = good.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out. It just might mark a watershed moment for companies who will then pile in and carve off their own unique features and put them under patent. I call dibs on press X to Jason.

[Source: Gamasutra]