Sony Patents System For Tracking How Players Interact with Certain In-Game Items and Scenarios

gamerant.com:

How a player can interact with the world of a video game is one of the main measurements of video games' advancement since they were first created. Games started off with simple inputs like move right, jump, and shoot, often these were the extent of player’s interactions for moving the game forward. But as games developed, they became massive open worlds with hundreds of individual characters that players can interact with differently. Online multiplayer games like MMOs have players encountering each other, allowing for nearly endless possible in-game interactions, and a much deeper sense of immersion.

Player interaction is what separates video games from other visual mediums like film and television. The player's ability to interact with the world of the game allows for brand-new story telling possibilities. Not all players use the ability to interact for the advancement of games, however. Instead, many would use this anonymous interaction as an excuse to harass and abuse their fellow gamers.

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Sony has now filed for a patent that could track player behavior, seemingly in the hopes of identifying which players are struggling with the game, and which players are using the game's systems to negatively impact the play session of other users. It is unclear what constitutes these negative player interactions but from the patent description it sounds like actions that would commonly be referred to as “griefing” among gamers.

Griefing is the name given to the deliberate provocation or harassment of players through in-game interaction in online multiplayer games. It is a common problem for multiplayer games where players are able to negatively interact with another player's character