This week saw the closure of Monolith Productions. You might not recognize the name or, if you do, you might be confusing it with Monolith Soft, the Japanese studio behind Xenoblade Chronicles. That’s the wrong Monolith and, yes, it is weird that there were two. Regardless of how much you know of Monolith’s storied history as a creator of cult classics and occasional breakout hits though, you’ve likely heard of its big innovation: the Nemesis system.

Casting A Long Shadow

First implemented in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor back in 2014, expanded on in its sequel Shadow of War, and expected to return in the now-cancelled Wonder Woman, the Nemesis system allowed for enemies you defeated to remember you and come back to exact revenge. It saw games spin up rivalries that were specific to your playthrough, creating the potential for some random orc to become the Joker to your Batman.

Unfortunately for us, Warner Bros. is expected to hold the rights to the Nemesis system until at least 2036. WB filed a patent for the Nemesis system, and in 2021, it successfully obtained it. Despite the closure of Monolith Productions, WB still holds that patent. If it keeps paying the related fees, it will own it for another decade. That means WB has the sole legal right to include the Nemesis system — whether by that name or another — in video games.

It Shouldn’t Be Illegal For Games To Innovate

I always wince when the legal system intrudes into art. I don’t think a musician should be taken to court because their song sounds a little bit like a different song. I rejoiced when Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse entered the public domain. And I firmly believe that any government official who floats banning a book should be banned from public office. Legislation that attempts to limit how similar a work can be to an existing work, or that seeks to prevent the public from learning about ideas the government deems dangerous, is bad legislation.

So it probably comes as no surprise that I’m not a fan of video game companies attempting to patent mechanics. Mechanics are such fundamental building blocks of games that if, say, Nintendo had patented jumping in the ’80s, the platformer genre wouldn’t exist. If id had patented Doom’s approach to shooting in the ’90s, the FPS genre wouldn’t exist. If PlayerUnknown had patented the battle royale, Fortnite and Apex Legends wouldn’t exist.

Big, profitable chunks of the industry could have been taken out of commission by the threat of litigation. There is a bigger conversation to be had about industry copycats and how nuanced creativity is more important than pilfering from what came before, but patenting mechanics is a surefire way to prevent that innovation from ever materializing at all.

Genres Are Evolutionary Records

Video games, like all art forms, are the product of what came before. Genres exist because one team did something well and other teams said, “Hey, I bet we could do that better.” Whether they succeeded or failed, playing through a genre across the decades is like taking a magnifying glass to the fossil record. Oh, it sprouted a new leg here. Interesting. Oh, it lost the tail at that point? That’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for him.

When a company patents a mechanic, like Warner Bros. did with the Nemesis system, it’s like stomping on the fish when it tried to crawl out of the primordial soup. Or, more accurately, it’s like saying, ‘This fish is so precious, no one else can look at it.’ Since 2014, only those two games have used the Nemesis System. We’re still, frequently, talking about Shadow of Mordor because no studio was able to take the ball and run it in a radically different direction, which is how creativity thrives in the games industry. Who knows what other developers could have done with it? I don’t. Until 2036, none of us will.