As esports continue to grow, the once-niche area of gaming culture is reaching a wider audience and generating more revenue each year. A number of esports teams are worth hundreds of millions of dollars at this point. The production behind the scenes is also looking at ways to expand, and a patent filed by Activision looks at ways to provide viewers with real-time data that could enhance the way esports broadcasts look in the future.

Activision has been busy shoring up its patents behind the scenes, recognizing that there is still room for plenty of growth in esports. The company recently renewed a patent on eligibility requirements for online tournaments, and considering a number of major esports events have shifted from in-person events to online tournaments, ensuring those entering meet eligibility becomes important.

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This patent, for use in esports broadcasts or for viewers of a livestream event, would allow for real-time game data to be cataloged and recalled almost instantaneously. Key in-game events would be logged in a "game log" that could be searched and clipped together to produce a video stream, essentially allowing for something akin to instant replay in sports broadcasts, as well as a way to quickly add overlays with game data to a broadcast.

Stats that appear during an NFL broadcast showing the completed pass percentage of the quarterback, or some advanced calculations, like the probability of a certain catch being made, could be integrated into esports broadcasts as well, making for a more engaging experience. Instant replay is something that Call of Duty: Warzone players have been asking for, due to hacking in the game.

The language of the patent is a little technical, but seems to indicate that the "game log" that is generated during a match would be filled with specific tagged events and descriptions of gameplay such that "events occurring during the video game session may be recreated." This particular phrasing sounds akin to the way the 'kill cam' works in Warzone, where a player who is killed sees how their opponent got them. The kill cam is a recreation of the event based on data sent from the killer's game to the person who is killed. The killer's movement, aim, and position are all logged, sent over, and then recreated in the dead player's game.

These logs will be loaded with metadata that can be tweaked to capture certain elements of game footage, including player stats, weapons used, and rule sets for a game. With this information, viewers could take a game log and use the same settings found in the log to play the game. If a fan wants to play Call of Duty: Warzone with the same loadout weapons their favorite streamer uses, by accessing these game logs, the viewer could recreate the conditions to do so.

This system could also be annotated to remove certain elements from video game playback, where something like copyright issues on Twitch may arise. By removing background music from a game, uploaded content could avoid copyright infringement claims generated by automated systems.

The way this patent describes "game logs," there is a lot of ways that video game streams could be tinkered with. It could bring about huge changes to the way esports broadcasts look in the future, with a number of avenues to enhance the viewer experience, and create a more engaging esports scene.

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Source: US Patent Office