Chatrooms and audio communication have been a part of online gaming for decades, with the forward-thinking Sega Dreamcast launching with built-in audio chat support back in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, online toxicity has plagued virtual communication for just as long, but it appears Electronic Arts might be planning to introduce a new means of communication in future games that could help solve this problem.
EA has filed several patents in recent months that aim to change the way some of the seemingly set-in-stone elements of modern gaming function. One such patent is for a system that could change the way advertising in EA games works, but more recently the company filed another patent for a "Contextually Aware Communications System In Video Games" that seeks to change the method players use to interact with one another.
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The most recent patent filed February 4 describes a system that will understand what items or objects a player is focusing on and select the proper type of "communication action" based on this contextual information. The system would allow for many context-driven communications to be mapped to a single button. Given that the system appears to provide an alternative for the increasingly monitored voice chats of present day gaming, it could potentially provide an alternative solution for gamers who want to wave goodbye to their headsets once and for all.
Any gamer who has ever played online without a headset knows the frustration of their character dying on the field two feet away from a med pack while the team medic is off in another part of the map. That could be a thing of the past, as Electronic Arts' patented system could provide a way for the player to simply look at the med pack and press the dedicated communication button.
The game would interpret the context, in this example a dying player plus med pack, and send out a message to the rest of the team letting them know that someone needs healing. Even for players that own headsets, some games like Sea of Thieves have had to stop their voice chat features due to toxicity in recent years, though it's unclear whether Electronic Arts intends for the system to replace voice chats all together.
It should be noted that these implications are speculation. It's unclear when the patent could be implemented into a game, if it ever sees the light of day at all. Of course, just because one company has a patent on a particular concept doesn't always mean another company won't come along and develop a similar idea, whether that results in legal action like with Valve's Steam Controller design.
For those who prefer old fashioned voice chats, other companies have been looking into ways to use artificial intelligence to solve toxicity issues on that front, but Electronic Arts is suggesting that there might be other solutions to the problem.
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Source: USPTO