Last week, Sony Interactive Entertainment published a patent for a system that would allow fans watching an esports match to participate and affect the match with different effects by meeting different engagement goals.
The patent, titled “Triggering Virtual Help or Hindrance Based on Audience Participation Tiers”, effectively lets fans positively or negatively influence a match from home by participating in different “engagement activities.”
As reported by esports.net, one of the figures included in the patent demonstrates a generic, theoretical example of this system, in which more drastic effects take place with each engagement level met. If 100 spectators press a button 10 times, then a cheer effect would play, potentially affecting the opposing team’s audio. If 1,000 spectators share the stream with a certain hashtag, then the players receive a boost. But if 10,000 of them were to scan a QR code that pops up on stream corresponding to their “most hated team,” then that team would lose a life.
Given that it’s a patent, the language and ideas in the official documentation are very vague and generic and don’t apply to any specific esport, but it does paint an interesting potential future of esports viewership and fan engagement. But if something like this possibly made its way to an official esports broadcast, there would be many concerns to monitor.
It seems like a terrible idea for a system like this to be implemented in any high-stakes environment, like a championship match. Additionally, a system like this could easily be sieged by bots.
While it may be a new concept to esports, it’s not new to traditional sports competition. The Fan Controlled Football League ran for two seasons in 2021 and 2022 before postponing the 2023 season due to capital funding issues, but it gave fans the option to call in various “power-ups” like a fifth down or a power play.
If something like that did make its way to esports, it would definitely shake things up.
