Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes — watching commercials earns ad-free playtime credits

More games are taking advantage of the free-to-play model, and Microsoft is building systems designed to deliver ads without disrupting the gaming experience. According to Respawn First, the system would first give players some ad-free playtime, which could either be based on time or in-game progress, such as levels and bosses. Once this expires, the company will then open a window and briefly serve “promoted content.”

However, this system will not just show ads out of the blue. Instead, it will work with the game engine so that they will only appear during downtimes, like after a boss fight, at the end of a cutscene, while a new level is loading, when you complete a quest, or enter a menu. While the ad is being served, the game enters a frozen state to ensure that player progress isn’t disturbed. After you finish watching the ad, it resets the ad-free playtime, allowing gamers to play another round with no distractions.

The patent application itself describes it as “a content management system” and that it could obtain a promoted content trigger event based partially on the game, suspend a user’s interaction with the game based on the promoted content trigger event, obtain promoted audiovisual content and present it to the user, commence the user’s interaction with the game, and establish “a credit based at partially on the promoted audiovisual content, wherein the credit delays suspension of the user’s interaction with the interactive software application during a credit duration.”

Based on this description, it works similarly to some free-to-play mobile games, where ads are automatically served after you finish a round or after a few minutes of playing. The difference with this system is that it doesn’t serve ads arbitrarily; instead, it works with the game engine and even uses machine learning to determine when it’s the best time to show players the ad.

While this is still a patent application and it’s not even clear if this has been deployed in actual games, it shows what Microsoft is considering for how it could monetize free-to-play games. We’ve seen similar moves with Xbox Cloud Gaming, with the company experimenting with an ad-supported free tier for the cloud gaming service.

While the tech that Microsoft applied for a patent on could actually be a good thing, as it would make in-game ads less jarring, we could argue that it would encourage both gamers and publishers to focus on free-to-play titles. The idea behind these games and services is that it would allow more people, especially those who don’t want to spend cash, to enjoy gaming. However, some say that they’ve actually broken the diversity and innovation in the gaming industry, as developers and publishers focus more on monetization instead of unique games and quality titles. You can view the USPTO application here [PDF].

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