U.S. Patent No. 8,425,325: Automatically generating a book describing a user’s videogame performance
Issued April 23, 2013, to Apple Inc.
Filing/Priority to February 6, 2009
A comic book of your video game life? A unique narrative based on your own in-game experience.
Overview:
U.S. Patent No. 8,425,325 (the ‘325 patent) relates to the automatic generation of a book, comic book, or e-book to record a user’s experience or choices in playing a video game. The ‘325 patent details generating a narrative structure by reading data from a user’s experience playing a video game. The recorded data serves as a basis to automatically select narrative text, separate from, and narrative of, the recorded data. It inserts one or more portions of the recorded data into the narrative as well as the narrative text, to implant user input into the narrative. This can generate a book, an e-book, or a combination of the two which can include gameplay screenshots. The recorded data can be gleaned from dialogue or be the results of a user’s interaction with the video game, and can include information on one or more characters from the game. The narrative can be considered to have various placeholders where recorded data is inserted to create the unique narrative.
The ‘325 patent may be familiar as implemented in Mass Effect: Genesis, or the interactive comic in the Mass Effect 3: Special Edition. These were used to allow players to have narratives generally only available to players who played previous installments in the Mass Effect series. This was important because some consoles did not have Mass Effect, but only Mass Effect 2, and the ‘325 patent prevented players from being locked into only one narrative state in the vastly branching Mass Effect universe.
Abstract:
Systems and methods are provided that record data in a videogame, such as a user’s character and performance in the videogame, and generate a book, e-book, or comic book based on the recorded data. A narrative data structure generated from the recorded data may include pregenerated text and images, and may provide for insertion of the recorded data into the narrative data structure. The recorded data may be converted into natural-language text for insertion into the narrative data structure. In some embodiments, the system may record screenshots of the videogame and insert the screenshots into the narrative data structure as illustrations. The narrative data structure may be provided to a location for printing as a book or other publication or may be electronically formatted and provided as an e-book.
Illustrative Claim:
- A method, comprising: recording data from a user’s experience of playing a video game on an electronic device; and generating a narrative data structure, further comprising: using the recorded data as a basis to automatically select narrative text that is separate from and narrative of the recorded data; and inserting one or more portions of the recorded data into the narrative data structure; and inserting one or more portions of the narrative text into the narrative data structure.
