Sony Interactive Entertainment has patented a feature that could modify the difficulty of games based on players’ skill. The idea, in short, would be to adjust the difficulty to our level so that we all had the same experience.
The patent, which was published earlier this month and shared on the website of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), refers to the feature as “adaptive difficulty calibration for skill-based activities in virtual environments”.
In essence, it refers to the idea of collecting data from users while they play, which could then be evaluated to find out how their skill level “corresponds to an expected level of performance”.
An equal experience for everyone, is it fair?
In addition, the patent explains that if someone’s ability does not match the so-called “expected performance level”, different parameters related to difficulty (movement speed, number of enemies, and player character strength) could be automatically and incrementally adjusted.
Interestingly, it also doesn’t seem that the data collection and difficulty adaptation would be limited to just one game. The patent continues to say: “In certain cases, a skill associated with one game may correspond to [a] ability in another game. For example, a person skilled at moving to new positions in a first-person shooter game may correspond to a person who runs quickly in a racing game.”
“Alternatively, a weakness of a person playing a first-person game may include taking too long to accurately aim at a target, and this weakness may correspond to a tendency of that person to not react quickly when a vehicle tries to overtake their vehicle in a racing game. This means that data collected from one game can be used to help select the difficulty parameters that will be updated when a person plays a different game.”
As with any patented feature, it is important to note that just because it has been registered does not mean it will be definitively implemented in the future. Earlier this year, Sony published another patent describing a feature that would allow players to replay campaigns from selectable “activation points” through streaming.
However, it is also not something that has become a reality yet. That being said, this type of innovation gives a lot to think about and suggests new approaches that developers could adopt in the future. Although it seems very difficult to standardize this and do it well.
