Educational game with dynamic message entry and display

Abstract

An educational video game with a hide and seek game software and a dynamic message entry and display method which can be played among many players in a fixed location or over the Internet is disclosed. The hide and seek game software has functions that enable the display of a landscape, a hide character, a seek character, and enable the movement of a hide character to hide in the features of a landscape and enable the movement of a seek character to seek the hide character. The game software display a central area with a landscape and a surrounding area, which is used as a space for dynamic display of messages based on age, gender and geographic location of the players. The messages may be from a group of types of commercial, school and community events, social messages for cultivating good habits, and personal messages from friends and relatives.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is divisional application of application Ser. No. 10/022,762, filed Dec. 15, 2001, examiner COBURN, CORBETT B, Art Unit 3714, in which a notice of allowance dated Nov. 20, 2004 had been issued for some claims.

The contents of application Ser. No. 10/022,762 are incorporated herein by reference.

Claims

1-24. (canceled)

25. A method of message delivery to a player, while playing a game, comprising the steps of:

enabling a game server hosting a game signing on players by a player identification means embedding a sequence from a group of player attributes of age, birthday month, geographic location, and gender;

receiving messages into a database with a plurality of attributes;

receiving players identifications into the database;

selecting those messages from the database that satisfy a player's attribute and

displaying these selected messages to the player while playing the game.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the message attribute is a game mode, further comprising the step of: selecting those messages that satisfy the game mode and displaying those messages to the game player while playing the game in that game mode.

27. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is a message type such as community message, event message, personal message or commercial message.

28. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is age of players.

29. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is gender of players.

30. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is geographic location of players.

31. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is a combination of precise data and a wild card to represent a class of players, based on their age, their gender and their geographic location.

32. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering messages with a message attribute, where the message attribute is time of day, season, or an event in progress.

33. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering player identification with a player attribute, wherein the player attribute is age.

34. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering player identification with a player attribute, wherein the player attribute is gender.

35. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering player identification with a player attribute, wherein the player attribute is geographic location.

36. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering player identification with player attributes, where the player attributes are a combination of year-of-birth, month-of-birth, gender, and zip code.

37. The method of claim 36, further comprising the step of: entering player identification with a player attribute, where the player attribute includes player's name initials.

38. The method of claim 25, further comprising the steps of: entering messages in the database with message attributes for each message that are independent of player attributes and are from a group including time of day, season and an event.

39. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering a message into the database with message attributes for each message that are from a group including player age, player gender, and player geographic location.

40. The method of claim 25, further comprising the step of: entering player identification into the database with player attributes for each player that are from a group including player age, player gender, and player geographic location.

41. The method of claim 25, the step of receiving messages further comprising the steps of:

receiving messages via a global computer network;

identifying message source to keep an account of messages from a message sender.

42. The method of claim 41, further comprising the step of:

billing a fee to the message sender.

43. A system of displaying messages to players during a game comprising:

a. a game server hosting a game, wherein the game server is available on the internet to the players;

b. the game server comprising a message function that includes, (i) a player sign-on function, that enables signing on players by a player identification means that embeds player attributes, (ii) a player identification function that identifies players with attributes that are a sequence from a group of player attributes of, player age, player birthday month, player geographic location, and player gender, and (iii) a message selection function that selects and display messages to players from a database of messages using the player identification attributes.

44. A computing device for displaying messages to players during a game comprising:

a. a hand-held computing device hosting a game;

b. the device comprising a message function that includes, (i) a player sign-on function, that enables signing on players by a player identification means that embeds player attributes, (ii) a player identification function that identifies players with attributes that are a sequence from a group of player attributes of, player age, player birthday month, player geographic location, and player gender, and (iii) a message selection function that selects and display messages to players from a database of messages using the player identification attributes.