Patents Examined by Thomas H Henry
  • Patent number: 11465060
    Abstract: A gaming system runs on a server executing software, and provides a first interactive interface to a first player, enabling the first player to establish a chat session as a chat leader, to invite a plurality of other players to the chat session, to select a game provided by the system from the at least one game server, and to launch the game with the chat leader and the other players in the chat session as players in the game, and provides a second interactive interface to players in the chat session as a result of invitation, the second interactive interface enabling the players in the chat session other than the leader to participate in the chat session, and to play the game selected and launched by the chat leader, who becomes a lead player in the game.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 6, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: Roblox Corporation
    Inventors: Deepak Murali Chandrasekaran, Guruprasath Krishnamurthy, Peter John Phillips
  • Patent number: 11468745
    Abstract: A method of allowing a player to play a gaming machine is described herein. The method includes displaying, on a display device, a game including at least one reel. The at least one reel includes a plurality of symbol positions that have a plurality of normal symbols positions and a plurality of special symbol positions. The outcome of a game is randomly generated and displayed on the display device. The method also includes randomly determining a number of special symbol positions being displayed with the at least one reel and spinning and stopping the at least one reel to display the generated game outcome, wherein the at least one reel includes the plurality of symbol positions having the determined number of special symbol positions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 10, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: Konami Gaming, Inc.
    Inventor: Arthur Lee
  • Patent number: 11468744
    Abstract: A method of sharing a wager on a live sporting event with another individual on a play by play wagering platform. Users can additionally invite other users to place the same wager or another wager on a different play. Upon accepting a wager invitation, the users additionally joining a chat conversation so as to communicate while placing wagers on the live sporting event.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2020
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: ADRENALINEIP
    Inventors: Casey Alexander Huke, John Cronin, Joseph W. Beyers, Michael D'Andrea, Joseph Bodkin, Michael Baker
  • Patent number: 11465040
    Abstract: The present invention relates to systems and methods for controlling a weapons-related video game on a touchscreen-based device. Aspects of the invention simplify the act of aiming at a target on a touchscreen-based device by: presenting a virtual environment from a first viewpoint and a user interface to a player, the user interface comprising at least one graphical user input element, the virtual environment including a plurality of targets, at least some of which has assigned priorities; assigning a priority to at least one of the targets; determining a highest-priority target out of the at least one of the targets that have been assigned a priority; receiving an indication that the at least one graphical user input element has been selected by a user; and, in response, determining a second viewpoint for viewing the virtual environment that is different from the first viewpoint for viewing the virtual environment, relative to the highest-priority target.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 11, 2013
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: Activision Publishing, Inc.
    Inventor: Gordon Hall
  • Patent number: 11465038
    Abstract: A method for providing a puzzle game performed by a game server connected to a user terminal via a network includes the steps of: performing a user login process in response to receiving login information from the user terminal; and executing the puzzle game on the user terminal in response to receiving a game execution signal from the user terminal. Game action is performed in conjunction with player object groups if it is determined that a puzzle block elimination condition is satisfied according to a cumulative result of eliminating the puzzle blocks.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2017
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignees: NHN Entertainment Corporation, NHN PixelCube Corporation
    Inventor: Seong Hyeon Kim
  • Patent number: 11465045
    Abstract: Techniques implemented by a game-hosting service to place a load balancer between client devices engaged in a game session and servers that maintain state data for the game session. Rather than having a single server maintain state data and host the game session, the load balancer will broadcast action data received from the client devices to the server that is hosting the game session, or “primary server,” and also to a redundant server that is maintaining state data for the game session, or “secondary server.” Thus, if the primary server is unable to continue hosting the session, the secondary server may begin hosting the game session using the state data maintained for the game session. Further, by offloading the network input/output (I/O) tasks of communicating with the client devices from the server to the load balancer, the server can allocate larger amounts of resources to hosting game sessions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 20, 2019
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Stefano Buliani, Yahav Biran
  • Patent number: 11465057
    Abstract: A system for presenting a skill-based game. The system includes at least one server having a processor configured to execute machine-readable code. The processor is configured to cause the server to create and provide a set of advanced choice game to the plurality of presentation devices of the users, which each present the set of advanced choice games on a respective display. Each game of the set having an assigned fixed odds payout based on winning user selections. The server receives, over the wide area network, data from the presentation devices characterizing a set of user-selected winners of the advanced choice games made by the users. The server update the event data pertinent to participants in the actual events associated with the advanced choice games. The server uses the updated data to calculate and assign payoffs to the users based on the fixed payoff odds.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 19, 2020
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2022
    Assignee: Vetnos LLC
    Inventor: Daniel K. Orlow
  • Patent number: 11406904
    Abstract: Disclosed are a gaming method and system using skill succession in a sport game. The gaming method may include performing a promotion scenario in which at least one trainer character participates when a promotion mode for a player character is activated in a sports game, configuring a skill set in the at least one trainer character to be handed over to the player character based on an establishment of a relationship between the player character and the at least one trainer character according to the progress of the promotion scenario, and processing the use of the succeeded skill by the player character in a process of performing a sports game instance in which the player character participates.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 18, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 9, 2022
    Assignee: GAMEVIL INC.
    Inventor: Dong Won Lee
  • Patent number: 11351459
    Abstract: A multiplayer game implementing a method for generating a plurality of training virtual areas; generating at least one GUI to display a list of the plurality of training virtual areas; using the at least one GUI, enabling a player to choose one of the plurality of training virtual areas, wherein said one of the plurality of training virtual areas is associated with at least one attribute; allowing the player to navigate a virtual character to said one of the plurality of training virtual areas; monitoring an activity of the virtual character in said one of the plurality of training virtual areas; determining a value of the at least one attribute based on the monitored activity; and updating a first attributes profile of the virtual character to a second attributes profile based on the determined value of the at least one attribute.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 18, 2020
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2022
    Assignee: Activision Publishing, Inc.
    Inventor: Omer Salik
  • Patent number: 11311803
    Abstract: There is provided an information processing device, an information processing method, and a program that make it possible to control a communication partner without losing a sense of immersion and without impairing a VR world view in communication between players in (virtual reality) VR. A range in which another player capable of recognizing a content spoken by a player is present is determined as an utterance range on the basis of context information. In the following, since the spoken information is transmitted only to the player who is confirmed as the utterance range, it is possible to control the partner at the time of utterance by the context information. The present disclosure is able to be applied to an information processing device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 4, 2018
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2022
    Assignee: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Shinichi Kawano, Yuhei Taki
  • Patent number: 11298623
    Abstract: The disclosed handheld controller may include a handle shaped and sized to be gripped by a user's hand and a battery compartment in the handle. The battery compartment may be configured to receive a replaceable battery that has a first end portion with a negative terminal and a second, opposite end portion with a positive terminal. The battery compartment may include a spring-loaded negative contact for electrically coupling to the negative terminal of the battery and a spring-loaded positive contact for electrically coupling to the positive terminal of the battery. Various other methods and systems are also disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 8, 2019
    Date of Patent: April 12, 2022
    Assignee: Facebook Technologies, LLC
    Inventors: Robin Michael Miller, Chin Yuan Cheng, Raymond Louis Nicoli, Balaji Chelladurai
  • Patent number: 11285382
    Abstract: The virtual location of a player in a location-based game is determined from the real-world location of the player's client device. The location-based game provides the player access to one or more chat room based on their location. To determine the locations of chat room, a server analyzes player locations in a geographic region, clusters player locations to identify centroids, and adjusts the clusters based on constraints. The server selects chat room locations (e.g., at points of interest) to more evenly balance the number of players in each chat room while complying with one or more restraints on the size of the geographic area served by each chat room.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 6, 2019
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2022
    Assignee: Niantic, Inc.
    Inventors: Jiahuan Liu, Mingliang Wei, Daniel Casadevall Pino, Charu Janqid
  • Patent number: 11253783
    Abstract: The invention discloses a pure end-to-end deep reinforcement learning for training car racing game AI bot that uses only the velocity information extracted from screen for both training and testing phases without using any internal state from game environment, such as the car facing angle. The learned AI bot can play better than the average performance of human players. In addition, the reward function is designed to consist only the velocity value, and use Ape-X distributed training framework combined with a variant of Deep Q Network to solve the sparse training signal problem caused by the reward function of an original design. Moreover, limit learner rate method is designed that improves the training efficiency and training performance. The AI bot trained in this way can achieve performance beyond the average human level and reach a level close to professional players.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 20, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 22, 2022
    Inventors: Chiu-Chou Lin, Ying-Hau Wu, Kuan-Ming Lin, PeiWen Huang, I-Chen Wu, Cheng-Lun Tsai
  • Patent number: 11235241
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a route navigation system that can aid the user by providing navigational aids for navigating within a virtual game environment. The navigational aids can provide visual indications to the user within the game environment in order to help direct the character to navigation objects used for traversing the environment. The navigation information used for navigation within the game environment can be determined based on a route navigation grid. A navigation module can utilize the navigation grid to help users navigate characters within the game environments of the game application. The route navigation grid can be generated based on aggregated route information and telemetry data associated with a plurality of users of the game application. The route generation module can be configured to automatically generate navigation links between navigation nodes within game environment based on telemetric data sourced from users of the game application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 13, 2019
    Date of Patent: February 1, 2022
    Assignee: ELECTRONIC ARTS INC.
    Inventor: Mark Scheurwater
  • Patent number: 11173402
    Abstract: Systems and methods to provide ledger-specific utilities for unique digital articles and other digital assets that are not fungible in an online gaming platform are disclosed. Exemplary implementations may execute instances of a game; manage user accounts associated with the users, including a first user account associated with a first user, wherein a first account inventory includes a first unique digital article; receive a first action request to use the first unique digital article in a first manner of usage; either permit or deny the requested first manner of usage, based on the type of unique digital article usage that is requested and on the type of decentralized ledger (or the specific decentralized ledger) on which the first unique digital article has been recorded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 8, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 16, 2021
    Assignee: Mythical, Inc.
    Inventor: Rudy Koch
  • Patent number: 11167212
    Abstract: Techniques implemented by a game-hosting service to place a load balancer between client devices engaged in a game session and servers that maintain state data for the game session. Rather than having a single server maintain state data and host the game session, the load balancer will broadcast action data received from the client devices to the server that is hosting the game session, or “primary server,” and also to a redundant server that is maintaining state data for the game session, or “secondary server.” Thus, if the primary server is unable to continue hosting the session, the secondary server may begin hosting the game session using the state data maintained for the game session. Further, by offloading the network input/output (I/O) tasks of communicating with the client devices from the server to the load balancer, the server can allocate larger amounts of resources to hosting game sessions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 20, 2019
    Date of Patent: November 9, 2021
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Stefano Buliani, Yahav Biran
  • Patent number: 11138836
    Abstract: A method of providing a multi-player wagering game includes displaying, on at least one primary display device to at least one primary player, a primary game interface for the wagering game comprising a first plurality of game elements for facilitating play of the wagering game by the at least one primary player. The method also includes displaying, on at least one secondary display device to at least one secondary player, a secondary game interface for the wagering game comprising a second plurality of game elements for facilitating play of the wagering game by the at least one secondary player, wherein play of the wagering game by the at least one secondary player includes wagering on at least one outcome associated with play of the wagering game by the at least one primary player.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2017
    Date of Patent: October 5, 2021
    Assignee: IGT
    Inventors: Stefan Keilwert, Michael Russ, Elisabeth Kiss, Lukas Angermayer, Petra Wagner, Mihael Vurusic, Werner Wagner, Marco Fink
  • Patent number: 11127258
    Abstract: A lottery gaming system and method providing a lottery game that enables a player to obtain a unique player set of symbols for a lottery ticket for a play of a lottery game. In various embodiments, the lottery gaming system and method enables the player to originally purchase the lottery ticket with a unique player set of symbols for the play of the lottery game. In various other embodiments, the lottery gaming system and method enables the player to change one or more of the symbols of player set of symbols of a lottery ticket for a play of the lottery game that the player previously purchased to obtain a replacement lottery ticket with a different player set of symbols (such as a unique player set of symbols) for that play of the lottery game.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 9, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 21, 2021
    Assignee: IGT GLOBAL SOLUTIONS CORPORATION
    Inventors: Dwayne Nelson, Patrick Danielson, Cameron Filipour
  • Patent number: 11117045
    Abstract: A method for playing a hold 'em card game with two hands provides a variant to a standard hold 'em card game by dealing four hole cards to a player, and splitting the hole cards into two sets of hole cards, with each set of hole cards being independently played, bet, raised, or folded in relation to the same community cards. An initial round of wagering occurs, followed by dealing four hole cards to each player. The hole cards are split into two sets of hole cards that are played independently of each other. There is another round of betting, before a turn and a river are also dealt. If the dealer's best of five hands exceeds a poker hand ranking of the player's, the player forfeits the wager. If the player's best of five hands exceeds the dealer's, the player receives an equal amount of units to the wager.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 8, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 14, 2021
    Assignee: 2 HH, LLC
    Inventors: Wayne Chiang, Jarom Severson
  • Patent number: 11110354
    Abstract: The present invention provides a method for providing a battle royale game using a supply box, the method comprising the steps of: (a) allowing a particular player to select a particular item owned by the particular player or allowing the particular item to be selected through a predetermined first algorithm in a first state by a game server; (b) when information relating to the particular item is acquired, generating a particular supply box including the particular item and corresponding to the particular player, and determining location information relating to a location on a map, at which the generated particular supply box is input when the game enters a second state later, by the game server; and (c) when the game has entered the second state, placing the particular supply box with reference to the location information and supporting the particular player to play the battle royale game by using the placed particular supply box by the game server.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 21, 2020
    Date of Patent: September 7, 2021
    Assignee: WONDER PEOPLE CO. LTD.
    Inventor: Min Hur