Quickly providing good matchups
First Claim
1. A game console tournament method, comprising the steps of:
- receiving a log in request from a tournament administrator;
prompting said tournament administrator for entry of one or more tournament parameters, said parameters including schedule criteria for instantiating a plurality of instances of said tournament, wherein each instance;
a) communicates with a plurality of remote game consoles of tournament entrants to set up game session criteria for a plurality of rounds in said tournament;
b) receives game session results from a plurality of game consoles participating in a common multiplayer online game session; and
c) determines a tournament winner based on results of a plurality of game sessions.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Multiplayer tournaments may be established, and then automatically executed by tournament server devices to help provide users with quality matchups against players of similar skill. Tournaments may be defined by an administrator, and then automatically instantiated any number of times to accommodate demand by players. Some tournaments may group players of similar rank in tournament rounds, and may also employ a window factor to prevent players from playing together too soon after playing together in a prior round. Some tournaments may use a leaderboard qualification process, allowing potential entrants to qualify for tournaments by accomplishing feats specified in qualification parameters.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A game console tournament method, comprising the steps of:
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receiving a log in request from a tournament administrator;
prompting said tournament administrator for entry of one or more tournament parameters, said parameters including schedule criteria for instantiating a plurality of instances of said tournament, wherein each instance;
a) communicates with a plurality of remote game consoles of tournament entrants to set up game session criteria for a plurality of rounds in said tournament;
b) receives game session results from a plurality of game consoles participating in a common multiplayer online game session; and
c) determines a tournament winner based on results of a plurality of game sessions. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A tournament method, comprising the steps of:
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receiving tournament registrations from a plurality of game consoles for tournament entrants;
ranking said plurality of registered entrants;
sequentially grouping a subset of said ranked entrants for participation in a game session in a first round of said tournament;
reranking said entrants based on performance in said first round; and
sequentially grouping a subset of said reranked entrants in a game session in a second round of said tournament, wherein when determining whether to add an entrant to a group, a check is made to determine whether a window factor of time has elapsed since the entrant last played in a game session with any member of the group. - View Dependent Claims (19)
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20. A leaderboard qualified tournament method, comprising the steps of:
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posting a challenge definition for a game program, said challenge definition including a plurality of game session criteria to qualify for a tournament;
receiving game session results from a plurality of game consoles of players attempting to qualify for said tournament;
ranking said received game session results and informing players of their current rank;
sending in-game notifications to players when their previously-qualifying score becomes a non-qualifying score as a result of subsequent player scores, and allowing said notified players to retry to qualify; and
closing the qualification period and conducting said tournament using said qualified entrants.
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Specification