This console generation has changed the way we experience games.  It used to be that once a game was finished, that was it.  There was no way to share this information, outside of telling friends face to face, or compare our performance or experience to that of other gamers'.  The Xbox 360 changed all this with its wildly successful Achievement system, and the PS3 , though a bit late to the party, followed suit with it's Trophies.  A patent application from Apple may take our bragging to another level, though, by giving us a real, physical account of our adventures in the form of a comic book.

U.S. Patent Application number 20100203970, filed by Apple in February of 2009, details a system that' capable of "Automatically Generating a Book Describing a User's Videogame Performance." The system would create a custom comic book that chronicled the experience of a player, capturing information such as a player's preferred methods of dispatching enemies, puzzle sections that posed a particular challenge to players, and would even capture screen shots from the game for use as illustrations in the book.  The result would then be available as a physical book, or as an eBook that could be shared with friends online.

The patent application mentions integration with all three home consoles, as well as handheld gaming systems.  Apple would likely handle the actual creation and distribution the final product .

As a lifelong fan of both games and comics, this idea intrigues me to no end.  A real, tangible comic that told the story of my experience in games like Mass Effect 2, Fable 2, or Dragon Age: Origins would be an awesome memento of my time in these fictional worlds, and would likely get me to finish more games than I do now.  It might be a bit difficult to find a price point that's attractive to gamers, but still profitable for Apple, and one wonders what incentive publishers would have to integrate the feature, but I think Apple's got a really good idea here, and one that could make the completion of games even more satisfying.