User Interface & Experience

Nintendo received 3 patents spanning camera behavior, combat controls, and racing game visuals. The first addresses a dual-control combat setup where a single controller switches between moving the player character and commanding a separate battle character depending on lock-on state, with automatic positioning handling the battle character's attack animations so the player never has to manually place them. The second covers how a game camera handles the moment a player climbs off a vehicle, automatically aligning the character's facing direction with wherever the camera was pointing to avoid a disorienting snap in perspective. The third applies similar logic to racing environments, where directional arrows on acceleration objects rotate based on the camera's current viewing angle, so a player approaching from behind sees a different cue than one coming from the front.

Sony received 4 patents touching on player experience across VR, training, cooperative play, and NPC interaction. One describes a system that reads how engaged a VR player currently is and signals that status to people nearby in the physical world, while also holding incoming messages and delivering them at moments when the game's intensity dips low enough to make interruption reasonable. Another uses gameplay history to detect when a player is repeatedly struggling with a specific section, then generates tailored practice scenarios that replicate the challenge without revealing story content, pairing them with on-screen controller input guides timed to the action. A third patent covers cooperative handoffs between players, using slow-motion pacing, haptic pulses, visual button prompts, and audio cues together to ease one player into control without a jarring break in the action. The fourth targets a common frustration in crowded game environments: accidentally talking to the wrong character. The system tracks where the player is looking and combines that with proximity data to determine which NPC they actually intend to interact with.

Cygames received 1 patent for a notification system built specifically around idle games. Rather than requiring players to open an app to check on reward progress, the system pushes time-based milestone updates from the server directly to a smartphone's lock screen, making the delivery mechanism independent of the app itself.

Skydance Silicon Valley received 2 patents that both center on giving players direct control over their position within a game's timeline. One allows players to jump forward to sections they haven't yet played, presented through a timeline interface that uses keyframe previews carefully chosen to avoid spoiling the story, with a machine learning layer that watches for frustration signals and prompts the skip option proactively. The second expands this into a full bidirectional scrubbing system, letting players move backward or forward through any moment in the game the way a video editor would scrub through footage, with the system automatically providing finer-grained control during cutscenes and broader jumps during active gameplay sections.

Hangzhou Pawprint Interactive Entertainment Technology Co. received 2 patents, both built around inverting or blending the traditional relationship between a player and their virtual pet. The first allows a player's character to physically merge with their pet companion, putting the player into a first-person experience of the pet's abilities tied to specific environmental triggers. The second goes further by letting the player's character transform entirely into a pet, enabling them to interact with other players' pets as a peer of the same species rather than as an owner standing apart from them.

Tencent received 9 patents covering an unusually wide range of interface and control systems. One addresses multitasking on mobile by shrinking the game into a floating window with key status information overlaid, so players can use other apps without losing track of what's happening in the game. Another embeds voiceprint data into cooperative action requests in multiplayer games, letting the system identify who is asking for help and personalize the response based on their audio signature without requiring anyone to speak live. A path-recording patent lets players mark locations during normal gameplay and automatically generate shareable navigation routes that teammates can follow with a single tap. On the display side, one patent provides MOBA players with 2 simultaneous field-of-view perspectives of their character at once, derived from the character's current pose rather than a static camera. Another MOBA patent automates the targeting step in flash-plus-skill combos, handling the spatial math that players would otherwise need to execute manually under pressure. A pet-capture patent adds a visible threshold marker to health and energy bars, showing players exactly at what point a capture attempt will succeed rather than leaving them to guess. The dual-control patent for battle royale games lets a single player independently operate both a ground character and an aerial drone at the same time using separate on-screen controls displayed concurrently. A basketball game patent places pass-target buttons near the player's thumb automatically when they initiate a pass, with each button linked to a specific teammate shown on screen, removing the need for imprecise directional swipes. Finally, the split-screen patent carves the mobile display into a zoomed game view and a persistent control area, allowing continuous gameplay alongside other active applications.

Dugan Health received 1 patent for a fitness application that converts physical exercise and GPS location data into multiplayer game inputs, where a player's real-world steps and movement directly control their in-game avatar and feed into location-based competitive challenges shared across a network of other players.

Supercell received 1 patent for a multi-touch interface that lets players deploy resources at multiple locations on screen at the same time. A single swipe or multi-touch gesture handles simultaneous placement across several points, with touch pressure and swipe speed modulating how quickly and how much gets deployed, replacing the repeated individual taps that complex strategy interfaces typically require.

Yidian Lingxi Information Technology (Guangzhou) Co. received 2 patents focused on team coordination in multiplayer games. The first automates the pre-match formation process by having players vote to select a combat leader and then algorithmically assigning attack routes to the team, replacing the slow manual process of a single leader dictating all roles and paths. The second displays the real-time movement routes of pursuing enemies directly on the game interface, including indicators for threats that are off-screen with actual distance measurements attached, and maintains that information continuously even when the player moves between game scenes.

NetEase received 4 patents addressing spectator views, touch controls, detection mechanics, and weapon collections. One transitions eliminated players in asymmetrical battle games into a unified screen showing live gameplay feeds and result cards for multiple teammates simultaneously, removing the dead time that typically follows early elimination. Another creates a dual-zone joystick system where players interact with 2 separate regions of the screen to control a single joystick, offering both direct and indirect input methods without adding more UI elements. A third introduces a camera-style scouting skill where players aim a virtual viewfinder at hidden enemies to generate a thermal marker that persists on the target as a status effect. The fourth turns weapon inventories into interactive 3D display spaces where each item carries automatically generated metadata tracking previous owners, their skill levels, battle history, and multi-dimensional scoring presented through visual emblems.

NCSoft received 3 patents covering spatial scanning, 3D navigation, and automated action bars. The first maps a player's finger gestures on a small sphere-shaped button to a full 3D directional vector, allowing them to aim a scan across vertical and horizontal axes with visual feedback appearing as an overlay sphere and a shifting directional indicator that responds to how long the button is held. The second brings the game minimap into 3 dimensions, letting players rotate it away from a flat top-down view to see objects at different altitudes, with floating indicators and density bars to help navigate environments that stack content vertically. The third lets players configure individual action bar slots to fire automatically on a timer, setting how often a skill or item repeats without manual input, with the option to merge multiple slots into a single coordinated automation group.

Apple received 1 patent for a gesture control system where a wearable device reads hand movements and translates them into commands sent to nearby secondary devices, including phones, tablets, and smart home hardware, with the system adapting which commands apply based on which device is currently in focus.