In late March, Sony released a new patent indicating that it is currently working on regulating player emotions by integrating a system that filters in-game voice chat for negativity, such as hate speech and more. The new patent from Sony Interactive Entertainment has the main goal of monitoring emotional states and implementing moderation rules based on the emotional profile of the player. The system can modify the presentation of messages according to the moderation action specified by the player's emotional profile. This technology can be used to prevent negative emotions, such as angry or bullying language, from affecting the player's mental health or sensory processing conditions.
The system stores the player's emotional profile in memory, which includes one or more moderation rules that define the moderation action responding to one or more emotional states. The patent also introduces the concept of punishment into the system, specifying that certain players may lose privileges during the session due to violations of moderation rules.
The patent explains that:
- Systems and methods are provided for detecting emotions and emotion-based moderation based on audio inputs. A user's emotional profile can be stored in memory. The user's emotional profile may include one or more supervision rules that define a moderation action responsive to one or more emotional states. The current communication session associated with the user and one or more other users can be monitored based on the user's emotional profile.
- An emotional state detected as being associated with a subset of messages may trigger at least one of the supervision rules by meeting at least one of the emotional states specified by the user's emotional profile. The presentation of at least one of the messages in the subset provided to the user's device may be modified according to the moderation action specified by the user's emotional profile.
