The Sony PlayStation 3 has a lot to offer in terms of entertainment, but if a patent dug up by Siliconera is to be believed, then there are plans in the works to let you talk back at that entertainment. In what has to be inspired by the beloved television sensation Mystery Science Theater 3000, Sony has interest in allowing players to watch media content and then fire back at that content through on-screen characters that sit at the bottom of the action with a complicated scheme that combines gaming with being a smartass.
This proposed program puts an overlay on top of a “media presentation” like a TV show or movie and allows players to interact with it while the presentation is playing. How? Here’s an example from the patent:
“For example, avatars displayed to a user, in response to user gestures in the real world, e.g. in response to manipulation of a game controller or other such expedient, may toss tomatoes that stick to the actor’s face or bounce off the actor’s face and roll along a table that appears in the movie or television show.”
Tomato tossing could be a scored mini-game. The patent explains players could get more points if you hit a star, for example. Overlays will act like virtual worlds with their own physics not related to the movie and tomato throwing avatars controlled by players.
While some of that idea is heavily inspired by MST3K, the level of physical interaction involved between movie and viewer/player goes beyond what Mike or Joel at the 'bots usually do during their movie-watching experiments. If anything, I'm reminded more of one of MST creator Joel Hodgson's post-MST projects, Jollyfilter, in which wacky CGI-created elements were superimposed over and into an existing film. Check out this sample clip of Jollyfilter in action (minus the soundtrack which the copyright police silenced a while back):
Whatever Sony has in mind with their patent, it seems to fall in between the level of interaction of MST spoken barbs and Jollyfilter antics. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, but I know I'll be watching to see how the company can make this work with existing media content, technical limitations, and other science facts.
(via Kotaku)
