Death Stranding has been a game with a vast and diverse history emitting from every syllable of its meticulously crafted design. An experience with mixed opinions, a landfield of intense thoughts and philosophies amalgamating into a single being throughout the world which players inhabit in the post-apocalyptic United States, where a cataclysmic event occurred that shattered the world as people knew it. They had to learn to thrive and adapt to a new one, a world you as the player have to connect. Hideo Kojima has ensured that creativity flows through the veins of Death Stranding and notably, some of this creativity by Kojima Productions has now been patented by Sony following the release of the Director’s Cut.
The game itself is an experience that has mastered the art of being very tailored to everyone but could even be said to be tailored to no particular person at the same time and it is this paradox that makes Death Stranding so interesting as a concept materialised. The past years have seen the world as a whole going through one of the most significant events in human history that will no doubt be looked back on in history within the future years and Death Stranding arrived on the eve of this change to society and symbolised the values of connection and hope in what was a time of loneliness and lost hope for many. It rekindled that sense of hope and hope is what keeps everyone moving forwards.
In terms of the patent that Sony filed for Death Stranding, it is directly related to the factor of moving forward and traversing the world. The Patent is classed as the following: ‘Terrain radar and gradual building of a route in a virtual environment of a video game’. In its simplest form, it protects Kojima Production’s work for their traversal systems, such as things like ‘realistic character balance’ carrying items and also the game’s method of radar, unique online systems, and building of routes in the game world on the HUD display or otherwise.
Although, Sony’s Death Stranding Patent is also narrow enough that other game developers/development teams and or studios may not accidentally use their patent’s content without noticing it. As in the abstract, it is noted that ‘the method including cross-pollinating a first path using an inter-game communication medium across a plurality of virtual environments of a plurality of asynchronous game plays of a plurality of players playing the video game’. Thus there is a high likelihood that this patent will benefit Kojima Productions for simply being able to protect their work as aforementioned.
Sony’s Death Stranding patent will be sure to cause a lot of talk within the industry about the use of patenting game mechanics/methodology as a whole since it is something that the industry is observing a higher degree of in the past years. Will creative sparks for interesting game mechanics have to go through rigorous patent checking first in the future? That answer still lays in wait but it is a much higher likelihood. In the meantime, this update and patent for Death Stranding will certainly be something that Sony is happy about being able to obtain.
Death Stranding is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC.
