Microsoft Seeks Patent On Shaming Fat Gamers 553
theodp writes "A newly disclosed Microsoft patent application — Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic — takes aim at fat people, proposing to generate fat avatars in gaming environments for individuals whose health records indicate they're overweight, limiting their game play, and even banning them. From the patent application: 'An undesirable body weight could be reflected in an overweight or underweight appearance for the avatar. Only requisite health levels are allowed to compete in a certain competition level. A dedicated gamer could exercise for a period of time until his health indicator gadget shows a sufficiently high health/health credit in order to allow reentering the avatar environment.' Linking one's gaming avatar to one's physique, explains Microsoft, will produce healthy and virtuous behaviors in individuals. Microsoft also proposes shaping gaming experiences by using 'psychological and demographic information such as education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc.'"
It's a Free Market (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And presumably all this will be done.... (Score:2, Interesting)
My guess would be that they want this for the XBox 360 to go along with Project Natal.
Profit Margins - not so much (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine how this will work.
Overweight people will be banned from a game if they don't 'get fit'. Those who really want to play will then 'get to it' and get in shape.
Of course with all that exercise and new activity they are participating in will slowly bring them to realize there is something else to life then online avatar based games (with very shallow user access requirements). Slowly they will turn away from such games and begin doing things that are more active and fit in with their new health conscious life style.
Profits in gaming start to fall off because they banned all the people who pay to play and be someone else. When they got to the point they would qualify to play the game, they no longer had the mindset to want to play the game.
And there go my Microsoft stocks.
Probably trying to avoid frivolous lawsuits (Score:2, Interesting)
You want to patent something useful... (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to insure that the fitness measurements of an individual actually belong to the individual. Haven't read their patent, but I can't see how a game can reasonably do this without some sort of biometric keys.
And what are they going to do about people with medical conditions that might preclude exercise or normal weight? Are they really going to kick people off off the game with cancer because they have no control over their water retention?
All in all, this is a remarkably dumb idea.
It might be better suited for a dating site, using some mechanism to insure that the Avatar for an individual accurately represented basic physical aspects of an individual while preserving mostly their anonymity. Maybe use a Video camera plus some other hardware to scan the individual both to identify them upon logging in and updating their avatar to reflect any changes to their weight/height/BMI/hairline etc.?
Please consider this *publishing* of this idea, and as a result *invalidating any patent* that might build off this stupid Microsoft idea.
Re:Digital medical records (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just going to leave this here...
http://www.healthvault.com/ [healthvault.com]
This is by Microsoft.
Re:Pot, kettle, black. (Score:1, Interesting)
They don't actually want to make games like this, they just want to patent it so no one else can do it to them.
Its an american problem again. (Score:5, Interesting)
you and your obsessions. fat people are not discriminated against or humiliated in any way in my country. the country is turkey. and i have never yet seen any other country nearby, leave aside any european countries in which overweight people were ridiculed, belittled, bullied or discriminated against in any respect.
i very much have the idea that you people are so obsessed with your own socioeconomical circumstances, and so many bullshit propaganda being fed into you that you fail to see a world outside yours with different ideas and inclinations exist.
Re:It's a Free Market (Score:2, Interesting)
Your Avatar's hobbies include playing this game... as you.
What about disibilities? (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most touching things I ever had on Xbox Live was when I received a message I from a friend who always seemed to be on, but not in the previous 2 weeks. The message was from his mother thanking me, and everyone on his friends list for being his friend and telling us he had passed away. She continued to tell us he had Downs Syndrome, and at 21 years of age had passed away from complications of it. She told us that we, his virtual friends were the only friends he really seemed to have, because we didn't know about, or judge him because of his condition.
Would this system have deprived him of the one joy he had in his life because he couldn't run the hundred meter dash, or didn't match up with some other physical standard?
Microsoft's MArket (Score:1, Interesting)
There goes Microsoft's gaming market. What next? "Sorry, this console doesn't turn on for smokers."
Re:Pot, kettle, black. (Score:1, Interesting)
I've lived in Redmond a while now. One thing is for sure: the pedestrian crosswalk signals are NOT too short.
They are fantastically, annoyingly long. A person in physiotherapy could make her leisurely way across the street, realize she dropped something on the other side, stumble back, get it, and cross one last time, and the hand still won't be showing.
I remember living in downtown Toronto, on Dundas street, and running as fast as I could at the instant the white "start walking" dude appeared the flashing orange hand would still arrive before I got to the other side. There's an island in the middle of the street specifically to account for people only being able to cross half the street. Rather than just making the lights longer. Because we LIKE our traffic lights taking 1/5 the time as Redmond / Seattle lights.
*cough* HIPAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I am very cynical of HIPAA. It has never protected me from health care providers making disclosures to third parties when I wanted (and was entitled to) privacy, and it just adds inconvenience when I want to do simple things like having a family member pick up one of my prescriptions ("Oh my god! We could never allow that, even if we had written authorization on file! Think of your privacy!").
So... what did HIPAA accomplish? Well, now when I go to a pharmacy, they force me to sign a HIPAA disclosure/waiver before they will fulfill my prescriptions. What does this disclosure say? Stuff along the lines of "here is our policy on how we will violate your privacy when we feel like it. Don't you feel better knowing?". Of course, I could choose not to sign, but then they won't fill my prescriptions. Ah, being presented with a Hobson's choice [wikipedia.org] over medical necessities always warms my heart about the human spirit.
"Blessed are the coercers, for surely they will fuck you over while smiling at you."
Anyway, to my point: yes, you are protected by HIPAA. However, my expectation is that they will just circumvent it by a click-through EULA waiver. No waiver, no play. There you go. Hobson would be proud.
Re:Digital medical records (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You think this doesn't effect you (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Digital medical records (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand I'd love for my IRL military training to count in call of duty.
Try Operation Flashpoint. I played that with 3 of my friends (CoOp) and we struggled, replaying some missions over 7 times. Then we exchanged one of the players for an active Finnish Army Medic and blasted thru the game with only one casaulty.
Re:Digital medical records (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, no, it wasn't games. I worked in a mall while I was in my first year at College. For lunch, I'd often have a donair, poutine, and a orange julius. For snacks, I'd get a pack of bars from the chocolatier. I never cared enough about my appearance to work out or restrict my diet in any way. I got basically no meaningful exercise, even though I thought that I did.
My wife (I can't remember if she was my girlfriend or fiancee at the time) won a prize that included 2 bikes. I biked to class one day, not realizing just how terribly out of shape I was. It took some time, since I had to stop and take breaks. (My rule was that I could take breaks, but I couldn't walk my bike.) I kept biking, and kept biking, and went down to about 185. The extra effort from the Wii has kept me at 165 for the last year and a half (It's starting to drop again from spin classes)
Interestingly enough, if I'd spent my money on video games, I'd never have gained the weight in the first place. I'd be nowhere near as strong as I am now, though -- thanks to the biking, I have superior lower body strength; thanks to the excess weight, I have resilient tendons and good skeletal structure.
Why not incorporate full-body game controllers? (Score:0, Interesting)
It's MS so who cares, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to wonder what stake Microsoft has in teen suicide and school shootings that they'd think this is a good idea. A bit of a leap you say? Let me lay it out for you.
Fat kid gets home from school, decides to play some games to put the bullshit he had to deal with at school behind him... Too bad his avatar is fat too! No escape from the ridicule and stupid crap! Or even worse, the same people who harass him at school start harassing him online, and then start harassing him at school ABOUT his fat avatar! BONUS POINTS!
So, depending on the kid's psychological makeup there are three possible outcomes:
Re:Digital medical records (Score:3, Interesting)
Man, someone needs to make a real-life D&D character sheet generator. Take I.Q., body fat, muscle mass, BMI, etc. into account and roll stats from that.
Re:Hope you have permission for that photo -- poor (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the kid in the picture is my younger brother. The picture was taken 15 to 17 years ago. One of his friends must have scanned it and put it online somewhere.
He doesn't look like that today. He started a weight lifting regimen about 10 years ago and he is probably in much better shape than most of the people making fun of this picture online.