Co-op always spices up a game experience, and Gears of War 2 took it up a notch with drop-in co-op. As it turns out Microsoft filed a patent on the idea years ago, and it was just recently granted.
"A squad-based shooter video game allows players to dynamically join and leave the game, while that game is in progress, without the players having to save and restart the game," reads patent number 7,559,834 uncovered by Kotaku. "When a new player joins an in-progress game, a new squad member is allocated to the new player and the screen is split to present a viewing panel for the new player that depicts scenes from the perspective of the new squad member. When an existing player leaves the game, the screen is unsplit to remove the viewing panel for the exiting player and that player's squad member becomes part of the squad being controlled by the remaining player(s)."
The patent, filed by James York of Austin, Texas on December 2, 2002, includes sketches of games from the now defunct Digital Anvil and that studio's co-op shooter Brute Force.
We're not big fans of these sorts of gameplay patents - imagine if someone patented/copyrighted a writing technique or directing style. If every gameplay element were patented, that would limit others taking that same basic idea and improving on it, which is a large part of the evolution of gaming.
