[DeveloperX]

Namco's brilliant idea (HAH..yeah right whatever)

>_< I planned to use minigames as preloaders for my games,....from what I get out of this, is that I can't......wtf.....
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Principal Software Architect
Rambling Indie Games, LLC

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[Bjorn]

Unless your game takes at least 10-20 seconds, you don't need to entertain anybody who wants to play your game at all. I would find it pretty impressive if you had to load enough data to make this take so long, while at the same time appalled by such long loading times, whether I'm entertained with a minigame in the meantime or not.

That aside, I really wouldn't be too afraid of Namco sueing you when you just ignore this patent. Also, it really makes no sense to call out to Namco for this obnoxious patent, but it rather nicely illustrates the trouble with patents. If Namco wouldn't have the patent, somebody else could have. And it's the whole fact that anybody can own such patents which is just insane.

From the article: "It took 46 years to reach the 10,000th American patent, but today, there are more than 10,000 patents granted every three weeks."

[BadMrBox]

Hm. Fifa 07 is using a minigame while loading the main game. I haven't seen Namco screaming about that yet ;).

I agree on the insanity part.
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[DeveloperX]