We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Wait hold up you can literally own patents on gameplay mechanics? I thought you guys were just making dumb jokes. Wow. That's incredibly fucked up.

Only fucked up in some cases. In Nintendo's case it really is, because it's a pretty neat-ass mechanic to have in horror games and considering they pretty much never make horror games that aren't goofy horror like Luigi's Mansion.

There are patents over some stupid shit like that of which tends to be a gameplay standard sure, but stuff like Crazy Taxi's gameplay is patented and then The Simpsons: Road Rage rips off the gameplay and they get into a lawsuit because of it. That's when it's worth it.

But for an example of a really stupid patent that never went through because of how stupid it was, Wizards of the Coast tried patenting "tapping" where you turn a card to show it's used or depleted. That pissed a lot of people off.