Sony Received a New Patent for Interactive Path-Building Mechanism Featured in Death Stranding

Sony Interactive Entertainment has got a new patent for a new interactive path-building mechanism featured in Death Stranding. The patent, "terrain radar and progressive development of a route in a virtual environment of a video game," was filed four months before the game was published on PS4 in 2019 and was just issued the patent on December 7. It also names Hideo Kojima as the inventor, and the summary explains "terrain radar and gradual route development in a virtual environment of a video game."

What’s this new patent is all about?

More specifically, the new patent is all about "a method for influencing a gaming world of a video game" and outlines a mechanism for online players to influence the topography of single-player worlds that are provided to localised (single-player) versions of the game via a "cloud gaming system."

Even though each player's game is a separate experience, this looks to describe comparable characteristics observed in Death Stranding, where players can design trails, build bridges, and leave objects for other players who will visit the same regions in the future.

Overall, this seems very similar to how players in Death Stranding can alter the environment of others. Despite existing in different single-player worlds, players in Kojima's latest game. The technique establishing that a first path has been travelled one or more times by one or more characters, it says, before changing "the first path based on the number of times the one or more characters have crossed the first path.

It's not the first time a developer has filed a patent for a gameplay feature. Some developers chastised Warner Bros. Interactive earlier this year after it was successful in patenting the Nemesis System in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. The patent is for a system that uses procedurally produced NPCs in a hierarchy that engage with players and remember their activities. Any such system is now effectively Warner Bros. Games' property.

The filing of a patent for these characteristics hints that Hideo Kojima and Sony may have more ideas for the universe of Death Stranding, and maybe working on a Death Stranding sequel.

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