Sony has recently published a patent that describes a system designed to boost the engagement of those watching esports tournaments. It’s titled ‘Triggering Virtual Help or Hindrance Based on Audience Participation Tiers’. Put simply, it’s a system that would allow viewers to interact with the matches they’re watching, either helping their team or disrupting the opposing side based on inputs, viewership, and certain actions.
In the document, it’s revealed that if the viewership for an event reached a certain level or if key tasks were completed by spectators, something would happen in the game. For instance, if a certain number of viewers tune in and support their team, that team will get an ammo buff or a power-up in the game. Or, if spectators ‘cheer’ by pressing a button enough, the enemy team might be given a de-buff of some kind.
Getting Engaged
Admittedly, the patent documentation is quite loose and generic, and it’s obvious that it’s not tied to any one game or genre. It’s designed to be portable and transferable, but the one constant throughout the publication is that this patent is tied directly to esports, and not the streaming of ‘general’ games. In a series of images nested within the published patent, we get an idea of how this proposed system would work.
There’s a tiered system laid out in a graph, for instance. It shows that at ‘Participation Level 1’, spectators cheer for their team to deploy an upgrade. At the second Participation Level, if 1000 spectators share the event stream, their favourite team will get an ‘Ammo Boost’. Alternatively, if the same-sized crowd inputs a button sequence – which in this diagram is the Konami Code (almost) – a certain item will be stripped from an opponent.
At the highest level – Participation Level 3 – it was suggested that if 10,000 spectators scanned a QR code of the ‘most hated team’, that team would lose a life. It’s harsh, but that’s engagement for you.
Is This Needed?
Encouraging deeper engagement isn’t a bad thing, but is this really the way to do it? It would be all too easy for this to be abused, with bots being employed to ruin the fun of others – we’ve seen similar things happen in the past on streaming platforms like Twitch. It’s not something that has ever been on anyone’s mind up until now. How many times have you sat down to watch an esports tournament and wished that you could alter the state of play in the game by sharing the stream or pressing a button code?
Ultimately, these patents are almost always published just for the sake of publishing them. Sony is well known for publishing all kinds of patents that never see the light of day. For instance, this year alone, the company patented some innovative controllers, one of which would warm your hands, while another would offer up a storage compartment for ear buds.
It’s highly unlikely we’ll see this system introduced, but it’s food for thought when it comes to engagement-boosting ideas and concepts.
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