Since 2015 game development studio Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment has been trying to patent the popular and innovative Nemesis system from Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel Shadow of War. It comes with great misery and regret to say that they've finally been successful in the attempt, but what is the Nemesis system and why is this patent such a potential blow to the industry?
Released in late 2014 Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor marketed itself as an open-world story driven game with a particular feature that had a lot of people excited; the Nemesis system. It's a system that lets randomly generated NPCs remember you and your actions. An example being that a randomly generated Orc (among the countless unnamed ones) can literally gain a name for himself by killing you, and then he will remember that fight and the way you fought during it. Likewise Orcs that enter conflict with you and escape, be shamed, maimed, or otherwise, will remember the encounter and reference it upon the next appearance, including any physical alterations like burn marks if you used fire, or scars from your blade.
It was and is a innovative and fantastic system that was only built upon further with the later game. Each Orc has one of many personalities, traits, weapons and even rivals and blood brothers amidst the others of its kind. There is also a hierarchy of captains, bodyguards, warchiefs, and so on. It was one of the most creative and fresh systems in recent time and really pushed forward dynamic storytelling and the company should by all means be praised for its creation.
So now we've got this system in the industry and it opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for future games and AI development. Great, right? Think of all the games that could adopt a similar system and take a step closer to that holy grail of game design; each playthrough being unique and different.
But no.
Warner Bros decided that the development of AI across the gaming industry needs to be knocked down a notch, and that it needs to patent a system it seemingly has no plan to use again just for the sake of locking it down. Because another company making a good game is just criminal, right?
To get further into the actual direct wording of the patent it protects 'Nemesis Characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games'. Notice how vague that is? One could argue that 'Nemesis' could be easily slipped by, but social vendettas and followers? If this is enforced heavily that itself has just delivered a glancing blow to interactive AI across all games. The patent not only does that, it goes a step further and protects the concept of characters changing their appearance after an encounter with the player character, as well as their own ability to move within a hierarchy based on the actions of the player character. Again, very vague, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
The patent goes live on the 23rd of February and has the potential to be held for a seriously long time. Here comes the money maker for Warner Bros though; If any other studio wants to use similar systems they have to purchase a license to do so from the patent holder.
With any luck the industry can get by this frankly greedy and selfish patent and make similar systems of their own for the sake of pushing the industry and AI development forward.
I vehemently disagree with any action that prevents the growth of the gaming industry and this patent holds no value to anyone but Warner Bros and their desire to lock down entire game systems and concepts in order to profit from it. Let's hope other companies don't follow in their steps and start patenting more systems, lest we be left with the most creatively starved and samey games we've ever seen to date (And that's already an issue).
/DEAD
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