An Amazon patent has now been approved, designed to group online players based on their preferences and behaviors; including “toxic” players.
Protocol reports (Editor’s Note: Despite the title, Amazon is mentioned further down in the article) on a patent filed by Amazon in 2017, and approved on October 20th of this year.
The abstract states how the patent is for “generating a multiplayer game session including a set of players with compatible preferences and behaviors.” The patent itself continues, discussing how players “naively” only matched with those of a similar skill level.
The patent argues that doing so as the primary or only factor in putting players together into a match is bad, as “toxic” players can ruin the experience for others. Even so, broadly dividing players as toxic or non-toxic is also too broad; as each individual can categorize different behaviors as toxic.
As such, the patent proposes players being grouped based on their behaviors, and preferences for who they play against. As such, players in that session are more likely to enjoy themselves, and get along with those they play against.
Several games have reportedly relied on similar systems- but focused purely on toxic players or cheaters. Amazon’s patent could therefore have interesting consequences should a developer seek to do similar.
Namco (now Bandai Namco Entertainment) originally held the patent for minigames during loading screens, leading to very few of them until the patent expired in 2015. As such, this may mean other developers will be unable to use this technique without coming to an agreement with Amazon.
There is at least one way Amazon will not be able to use the patent. In early October of this year, Amazon Games announced their free-to-play shooter Cruicble was shutting down just five months after launch. The game had a shaky launch, was poorly received, and had a troubled post-launch development cycle.
In addition, Amazon have also recently patented a way to yell at delivery drones, so they recognize who they are supposed to deliver to by their voice.
