U.S. Patent No. 10,639,553: Systems and methods for crowd-sourced game strategy
Issued May 5, 2020 to Electronic Arts Inc.
Priority Date: July 1, 2014
Summary:
U.S. Patent No. 10,639,553 (the ’553 Patent) relates to collecting data on the strategies of human video game players to use as non-player character (“NPC”) behavior, or as suggestions to human players to improve their gameplay. The ’553 Patent details a method of analyzing saved game strategies from human players to assess the strategies’ effectiveness. This analysis may consider the context in which the strategy was used, such as involved players’ skill levels, team composition, strategy of the opposing team, player positioning, team objectives (e.g. offense or defense), time left in a game or round, and percentage left to objective completion (e.g. yards to completion or progress towards capturing a location) to determine a strategy’s effectiveness in a given situation.
Abstract:
Various embodiments provide systems and methods that collect data regarding game strategy decisions by human players during video game, and utilize the collected data to either adjust or replace behaviors of computer players and/or suggest game strategies to human players during video game sessions. The game strategy decisions may be harvested from human-vs-human and human-vs-computer video game sessions. The data may be harvested from online-connected video game sessions, which may be hosted over an online video game network. Depending on the embodiment, the harvested data can include information regarding game strategies used by players during the video game sessions, the game contexts in which the game strategies were respectively used, and the results achieved by the respective use of the game strategies. Systems and methods described herein may facilitate a computer player having behavior that is (at least partially) “crowd-sourced” based on game strategies used by online-connected video game sessions.
Illustrative Claim:
1. A method comprising: receiving first data from a first client device, the first data regarding a first game strategy used, by a first game player, in a first game context of a first video game session between the first game player and at least a second game player, the first video game session involving a video game; updating a game strategy dataset based on the first data, the first data at least including an identity of the first game strategy and an association between the first game context and the first game strategy, the game strategy dataset including a set of two or more previous game strategies used in a set of two or more previous game contexts; identifying in the game strategy dataset a set of two or more relevant game strategies based on a set of two or more game strategy criteria; and providing a second client device with second data regarding the set of two or more relevant game strategies, the second client device being configured to use the second data to provide a set of two or more suggested game strategies for use in a second game context of a second video game session involving the video game, the second video game session being between a third game player and at least a fourth game player, wherein each game strategy of the set of two or more suggested game strategies is selected using different game strategy criteria of the set of two or more game strategy criteria.