Monsarrat Wins Its 5th and 6th Patents
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Monsarrat, a video game maker in Los Angeles, continued to expand its presence in outdoor video games by winning its 5th and 6th patents. Meanwhile, competitor Niantic (Pokémon Go) has a stalled strategy in outdoor gaming and is in talks to sell off its game division.
Pokémon Go puts one simple type of gameplay outside ($1B/year), but its scattered map points don’t support the contiguous landscapes needed for proven, blockbuster PC genres like action and roleplaying. Who will bring those giant game types outside ($10B/year)?
Monsarrat is already doing it. Their technology lays out a 3D fantasy world across a real world space, which you walk through to play like the Holodeck on Star Trek, and is now available as a demo game, Landing Party, on Apple App Store and Google Play.
Monsarrat’s first 4 patents relate to placing a fantasy world into a small space such as your back yard, or a local park, or even playing indoors. That is vital to the future of outdoor video games because most players don’t live next to a large park. They want the convenience of playing in small spaces.
The 5th patent, fully granted this month by the US Patent and Trademark Office, relates to vehicles. As children we all played with toy cars and airplanes, walking around pretending to drive them. This new invention from Monsarrat brings that joy into AR walking games, outdoor mobile games, supporting for the first time a racing car game or airplane simulator game outside. This follows Monsarrat’s strategy to port the biggest and most successful PC game genres outdoors.
The 6th patent relates to hills and valleys. In augmented reality, normally a flat virtual world is overlaid onto the phone camera view of the flat real world. But what happens if you want the player to descend into a crater in the game world? What happens if the real world space, perhaps a public park, has tiny hills to walk up and down? Monsarrat has already coded a first take on this algorithm and it’s surprisingly immersive. It really does feel like you’re walking down into a crater in the game world, even when in the real world you’re walking on level ground.
Like its other patents, these two new patents have broad claims that cover “any algorithm” and stake out even more intellectual territory for Monsarrat in the future of outdoor video games. See videos and more at monsarrat.com.