U.S. Patent no. 10,272,346: Bounded competitions in a video game framework

Issued April 30, 2019 to Activision Publishing, Inc.
Priority Date June 7, 2012

Summary:
U.S. Patent No. 10,272,346 (the ‘346 Patent) relates to video games and video game competitions. The ‘346 Patent provides a method for bounded competitions inside of a video game framework. It proceeds by providing an open competition for players, receives registration and game related data for each player, and then determines a rank for each registered player based on this data. The system can receive data for a multitude of players that it would then use to establish a competition based on ranks and the data it has available. It is normally difficult for game systems to properly take into account the different aspects of a player’s experience to create a fair and balanced tournament structure. Different parameters such as total playtime and expertise on a specific in-game weapon or technique are not usually measured and instead total player level or a similar metric is used. The ‘346 Patent attempts to improve upon these past methods by creating a more holistic and inclusive view of a player’s skill in order to create these video game competitions.

Abstract:
Competitions involving video game players may include competitions subsidiary to a purpose of video game play, and may be bounded in time, either across play of multiple video games or within play of a particular video game

Illustrative Claim:
1. A method, performed by a server, for a competition in a video game framework, comprising: entering a plurality of entities into video game competitions which occur over predefined time periods, with at least some of the video game competitions occurring over at least partially overlapping time periods, with at least one entity entered into multiple of the video game competitions occurring over the at least partially overlapping time periods; setting a timer for each of the video game competitions according to the predefined time periods; receiving, by the server over a network and during the time period for each video game competition, game play data generated through play of at least one video game from each game machine utilized by the entities; determining, by the server and using the received game play data, for each of the video game competitions, a number of events matching a predetermined game activity event for each entity entered in that competition, wherein the predetermined game activity event differs between at least some of the video game competitions, including the video game competitions occurring over at least partially overlapping time periods; and determining, by the server and based on numbers of matching events, a ranking of the entities in each video game competition.