Activision May Reward Players For Promoting Its Games To Others

The gaming studios are seemingly in an arms race to secure innovative ideas for themselves. Activision is also one of the leading figures in this competition, and its latest idea further proves it. A new patent published by the company now wants to reward players for publicizing its games to others in the community. We’d have to promote the gameplay of various titles to reach certain thresholds to be eligible for rewards.

The patent dubbed “VIDEO GAME GROUP DYNAMIC BUILDING” wants gamers to spread various gameplay patterns and strategies that others might not be familiar with in order to make them more interesting. These gameplay “exploits” could be shared with others in the community via streaming and other methods, encouraging others to learn and understand games better.

Methods and systems are utilized which may encourage video game players to share their video game play exploits with others, encourage others to play those same video games, and to encourage those others to accomplish achievements in video game play,” reads the patent.

The players facilitating games would be rewarded if a certain number of viewers join streams, or gamers purchase a game because of streamers, or via hosting in-game tournaments and reaching specific levels. Activision also mentions that associating with players who accomplish something could also grant you rewards.

The patent argues that currently, players of a game might not get to be familiar with all the gameplay patterns, especially those they’d enjoy if they knew about them. Most users do not engage with each other in multiplayer titles, which defeats the purpose of socializing and collaborating. It can completely bring down the interest of solo players after facing difficulty or boredom. So, Activision wants to solve this dilemma with the new system.

The game player may merely not know of the opportunities presented by other games or game play patterns, even though other game players may have such knowledge. […] If only someone would introduce the game play pattern to the game player. Unfortunately, encouraging individuals to share play of video games may be difficult.”

All in all, the patent intends to promote games within communities to invite more players, grow collaboration, and teach new strategies to existing players—all while rewarding users for it. To me, it sounds like an evolved version of referral links that we’re used to seeing in multiplayer titles.

This is certainly not the first time Activision has brought forward eccentric yet interesting ideas through patents. The company also earlier patented to customize users’ gameplay based on time dynamically. Additionally, it also secured a system to share our in-game inventories with other players.