Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – if implemented, Call Of Duty chat rooms would go dead silent (pic: Activision)



Aside from monitoring PlayStation players’ posture, Sony is apparently interested in moderating emotions in order to mitigate online abuse.



Compared to Microsoft and Nintendo, Sony seems to love throwing new ideas at the wall to see if any of them stick, judging by all the weird patents it’s had published recently.



Just last week, one was discovered that posited a way of changing the temperature of a PlayStation 5 controller , which would be done for the sake of immersion – because burning your hands during a lava level sounds like a great idea.



However, it seems Sony also has a vested interest in the health of its players. One such patent from last month was all about monitoring posture , and now another talks about moderating players’ emotions.



The patent is titled Emotion Detection & Moderation Based On Voice Inputs, which points to its primary use being for online play.



Its description is typically abstract and a bit difficult to parse, given all the technical jargon, but it mentions a ‘user emotion profile’ which may include ‘one or more moderation rules that specifies a moderation action responsive to one or more emotional states.’



From the sound of it, any such technology would theoretically alter messages between players if one of these moderation rules is triggered.



‘An emotional state detected as being associated with a subset of the messages may trigger at least one of the moderation rules by corresponding to at least one of the emotional states specified by the user emotion profile,’ reads the patent.



‘A presentation of at least one of the messages in the subset being provided to the user device may be modified in accordance with the moderation action specified by the user emotion profile.’



What happens if an abusive message isn’t made in anger, though? (pic: USPTO)



The patent was published on March 30, and spotted by website Gamesual , but Sony submitted the patent in September 2021, so it’s an idea the company’s toyed with for a few years now.



What does it actually mean, though? Well, the idea seems to be a very roundabout way of mitigating verbal abuse in online games.



Such behaviour can have a toll on one’s mental health. So, theoretically, this system could pick up if a player is violently shouting at another and ‘modify’ their message and even issue some form of punishment if they frequently violate the moderation rules.



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We’re not entirely sure how someone’s voice could be modified on the fly or what that would even do. Would it just censor the swear words? Or immediately mute their voice if they’re shouting? What if they’re being nasty without raising their voice in anger? The intentions are understandable, but it doesn’t seem very practical.



This could be why it’s just a patent for now. Even if it’s been considered, there’s no guarantee it’ll actually be implemented.



Online bullying remains a problem that many companies are constantly being pressured to solve, with mixed results. Sony’s own reporting system on PlayStation is apparently easy to manipulate, allowing toxic players to get the people they’re harassing banned rather than the other way around.



Sony seems to have lots of ideas that it doesn’t go through with (pic: Sony)



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