this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
86 points (97.8% liked)

Games

32938 readers
913 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] echodot@feddit.uk 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

At one point didn't a company have a patent over an interactive loading screen?

Which is why loading screens in games have been boring for years, because actually having any kind of thing to do while the game loads is apparently banned.

[โ€“] Kelly@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This wasn't as general as many people think:

  1. It applied only to "auxiliary games" so anything using the primary engine was ok e.g. running in the fog for assassins creed or practicing moves in a combat game.
  2. It applied only to US and Japan so anywhere else was unrestricted. The entire PAL region was unaffected.

But also:

  1. The patent was held by Namco / Bandai Namco, they are a prolific publisher but made very limited use of their ability to use loading screen mini games freely.
  2. The patent expired in 2015, despite this very few games have used loading screen mini games since.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5718632

I can only conclude that the industry just wasn't that interested in the idea.