STATUS

Patents, trademarks, copyright & all similar stuff have grown considerably ridiculous/idiotic as of late.

I bought a chocolate the other day and the package said the orange colour was trademarked by that chocolate owner...

Wait wait wait - I thought game mechanics specifically COULDN'T be patented because it's basically just math? Or am I thinking of something else?

Like, if this stuff can happen - why don't filmmakers patent cinematography techniques for god's sake.

Game rules can't be copyrighted but there's nuance in here. Wizards of the Coast has a patent on 'tapping'* cards in Magic the Gathering card games for example but you can have a rule in your own game that is the same in every way but the name. There's also a whole world of trouble once you get into how rules are implemented in software and you can patent that stuff. Really everything involving software patents is awful and why the big names spend billions acquiring others to get their hands on their patents. Whether said patent is good for anything or not comes down to legal battles, or at least the threat of. Shit's insane but that's what we've got and nobody with money and power is that interested in rocking the boat due to the investment made in the current system.

(I'm at work so I haven't watched the video yet but I have a good idea of what comes up, especially if EDGE Magazine has come up in thread)

* Tapping is basically making a card unavailable until it becomes untapped. For example a creature card might have an ability that is "Tap: Do 1 damage to target player" and using it means that card isn't available to do its normal actions like attack or block or use another ability that requires tapping until it becomes untapped which generally occurs at the start of your turn.


e: Getting a patent and having it mean anything in a court of law is big too. Just having a patent doesn't mean everything (but it does mean a lot).

Game mechanics aren't pure mathematical formulas, they're a set of rules defining something. In theory I can definitely see how something like Squaresoft's old patent on ATB combat is really no different than a patent on a coffee maker. If you invent a new product, the idea of a patent is that other people can't replicate it for a period of time - this helps protect inventors, in theory.

Where it gets weird is that games aren't just inventions, they're also pieces of art. And when you patent the method you used to create your art, you're not just stopping larger companies from stealing your idea, you're also stopping artists from creating similar art. I don't like that one bit.

But in some ways, game mechanics patents would nevertheless actually be a good thing if they worked, because they're supposed to prevent shit like all the game clones on the App Store.