If you put it in your game they’ll probably sue.
Today’s Hotcakes article is based off of my ongoing casual rifling through patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Every so often the media will glom onto some crazy patent filed by a tech company, usually by Sony. The patents fuel speculation on features like backwards compatibility, a dystopian future where people are expected to shout “McDonald’s” at the television to skip ads, etc.
The patent I stumbled upon is rather old but still in effect. The patent covers an RPG system where everyone on the field utilizes a shared mana pool. I know what you’re thinking; is there anything else to this patent? Well yes, but also no. The shared mana pool is the front and center point of the patent itself.
MP therefore does not belong to each specific character, but is stored, in a sense, as field energy, which is shared by all the characters participating in the battle. Hence, there naturally results a fight for MP between the friends (also referred to as “fellow characters”) and the enemies (also referred to as “enemy characters”). The use of a new battle system like this creates a new pleasure of devising strategies with a new level of game entertainment.
As a game mechanic the idea of a shared mana pool tapped into by player characters and enemies would open up a lot of possibilities for new game ideas. The fact that Sony owns that patent until 2029 is disheartening to say the least. That Sony went through the process of patenting this system and (to the best of my research) hasn’t even bothered using it themselves is disappointing.
Source: Patent
MMO Fallout 