Love them or hate them (I love them), Sony’s Trophy system is here to stay, and if a recently published patent is any indication, the company may be looking into a way to easily insert Trophies into their older legacy titles.
Sony’s patent, which was filed in September 2012 and published today, describes a system where Trophies would be awarded to players after they access certain predetermined “triggers”. The patent application briefly describes the process as follows:
“A method and apparatus for adding trophy support [to] games that do not have trophies without modifying the original game. The method and apparatus are used to detect particular disk access, use the detected disk access as potential trophy triggers in games, and recognize the triggers while a game is played. Trophies are awarded based on the triggers, and the awarded trophies are stored.”
In addition to simply adding Trophies that are gained by accessing certain parts of the game disc, the patent also allows for the use of “increased or heighted criteria” for triggers, which could be used for a “more valuable or sought after Trophy”. Additionally, this system could also set “low trigger thresholds”, such as logging “a certain number of hours playing a game”, to give players a “less valuable” Trophy.
The entire system seems to be relatively simply to use for developers as “Semi-automated tools may be used to analyze the contents of the disk media as well as in-game disk patterns to produce a palette of potential trophy triggers” that can be used to define the set of trophies for the title.
Sony clearly notes that this Trophy system is intended to be used for “older games” that “do not have the capability to award Trophies to player[s]”, which seems to be a nod to their extensive PSone and PlayStation 2 library of games.
Patents don’t always end up turning into actual features, so we will have to wait and see if Sony ever moves forward with their idea to add their Trophy system into their legacy titles. If we ever hear any official word on this front, we will make sure to pass it on.
