Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ToonyMan]

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/12/18/1649253/Microsoft-Seeks-Patent-On-Shaming-Fat-Gamers

"A newly disclosed Microsoft patent application — Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic — takes aim at fat people, proposing to generate fat avatars in gaming environments for individuals whose health records indicate they're overweight, limiting their game play, and even banning them. From the patent application."

I'm quite sure they wouldn't actually do that...

[Akigagak]

That is too screwed up, even for Microsoft.

I call bulls**t.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Creepy and descrimination against fat people... most of whom should be healthier but it's not up to microsoft to legislate excercise and eating real food rather than psuedo-food chemical processed shit like soda, saturated oils, and everything else turning us into fatties.

[Duke 2.0]

"Microsoft also proposes shaping gaming experiences by using 'psychological and demographic information such as education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc.'"

 Yup, this is BS. Microsoft knows well enough not to screw around with this.

[Aqizzar]

Uh... what?  I don't even understand what this is for.  Avatars of who?  For where?  I inherently distrust any "news" story that insists some company is going out of its way to be evil dicks.  Really, uses health records to alter ingame depictions?  How and why would Microsoft have people's health records?  How and where would they effect game content?  If I'm 300 pounds and playing Halo 3, does the Master Chief frame model suddenly balloon up to scale thanks to Ray Ozzie somehow knowing my pant size?

Yeah, I'm calling complete and total bullshit on this.

[Jreengus]

Aside from anything else any game using this would sell terribly.

[Jude]

This is even more obviously made up than that Big Brother Copyright Treaty From Hell thing

[Leafsnail]

Y'know... if you look at the actual patent...

An avatar generator for a virtual environment reflects a physiological characteristic of the user, injecting a degree of reality into the capabilities or appearance. Thereby, many of the incentives of the real world are replicated in a virtual environment. Physiological data that reflect a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication. Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise. Physiological data that reflect the health and perhaps also mood also improve social interaction in virtual environments. People seeking to meet and become acquainted with particular types of people are not thwarted by the artificiality of avatars. The physiological data can be gleaned from a third party health data collection repository, a healthcare smart card, a real-time physiological sensor (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, peak flow, pedometer, etc.)

Which sounds more like... I dunno... a dating thing with avatars more like yourself?

Eh, whatever.  They'll probably never actually release a product to go with this patent.

[Luke_Prowler]

This is the stupidest idea ever (if it were real). People play games to get away from reality. If I wanted reality, I'd get a job.

[G-Flex]

Word of advice: Don't trust whatever anybody on Slashdot says, especially if it's about Microsoft (... or much else).

The basic idea behind the patent is fairly simple and obvious: Virtual avatars that reflect physical characteristics of the player. There's nothing inherently sinister about this.

Of course, being a patent, it's more about the implementation than the idea itself anyway.

[eerr]

Sounds like a patent for improving the Avatars inside Xbox 360.

Also, patent sound like bullshit because they don't describe the whole product in complete detail. They focus much more on the patent at hand.

[qwertyuiopas]

Sounds more like they want to *prevent* others from cleverly implementing such a system in such a way that it draws hordes of otherwise microsoft-loyal players...

And watch as nintendo sues them for it from all those annoying wii fit titles.

[G-Flex]

Except patents apply to implementations and designs, not to ideas/concepts. The existence of this patent wouldn't preclude other people from doing similar things.

[Blacken]

Except patents apply to implementations and designs, not to ideas/concepts. The existence of this patent wouldn't preclude other people from doing similar things.

Not always true, when it comes to software. Hence the problem with software patents.

[G-Flex]

Well, it's ideally true when it comes to software. The problem is that nobody dealing with them seems to actually know the difference.

I suppose this is a problem with new technology in general: When technology is relatively new, it's easy to confuse a new idea with the implementation of that idea, especially if you're 50 years old and working at a patent office, apparently.