Trusted information management system for virtual environment

Abstract

Methods and apparatuses for managing anonymized character profile information and scheduling in-game activities for online virtual game environments. The disclosure describes a trusted method for automatic synchronization of character profile information with a trusted information management system that minimizes the possibility of fraudulent character profile information and allows for the efficient coordination of in-game activities by the users of the online virtual environment. Methods are described for interacting with a trusted information management system in both in-game and out-of-game settings. According to one embodiment of the invention, an in-game module of the virtual environment allow for automatically synchronization of virtual environment state information with a trusted information management system at periodic intervals. According to another embodiment of the invention, access to the trusted information management system via a web browser application allows for out-of-game management and scheduling of in-game activities by the user of the online virtual environment.

Description

FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH[0001]Not applicableSEQUENCE LISTING OR PROGRAM[0002]Not applicableFIELD OF THE INVENTION[0003]The present invention relates in general to tools and methods for online virtual environments. In particular, the present invention relates to tools and methods for management of character information and activities in online virtual environments.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0004]Online virtual environments are relevant to many useful applications. Online virtual environments which support a large number of simultaneous users (also known as players) are referred to as massively multiplayer. Online virtual environments provide a shared space that can host up to a large number of users (e.g., thousands to millions of concurrent users). Typically an online virtual environment includes a server-side component (the “server”), which may be implemented as software running on a single general purpose computer or networked cluster of general purpose computers, and a clien...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

It is common for users of an online virtual environment to spend a substantial amount of time and effort in customizing the virtual appearance of their characters, acquiring virtual property, and acquiring experiences in the virtual environment.

The sheer number of players and the expansive virtual geography of many online virtual environments present challenges for social interaction within the virtual environment.

Namely, because players are distributed in different regions of the virtual game geography, they are often remote from other players within the virtual geography.

This manual process is very time intensive and intractable in practice, since the total virtual geography is generally very large relative to the visible area displayable in one screen on the display device.

Furthermore, the presence of characters may be sparsely located in this geography the desired qualities of the character may be rare.

Players often spend substantial amounts of time posting messages in chat rooms to solicit other players to participate in planned activities.

Because there is a limited buffer of past messages that are viewable in a chat room, players often post the same solicitation message in a chat room periodically, resulting in much wasted effort and re-reading of the same message.

However, because of the large number of players of MMOGs, players will not generally be acquainted with the majority of the other players of the game.

Additionally, players will not always wish to play with players that they are familiar with or have played with in the past.

However, web forums are used for many other general purposes, and have few features specific to MMOGs and particularly activity management and activity scheduling in MMOGs.

Therefore, it can be cumbersome to schedule activities via web forums, often requiring much time and resulting in confusion over what activities were agreed upon.

Additionally, these out-of-game methods typically cannot be used at the same time as the player is playing the MMOG, as often the MMOG game client requires the entire full screen of the display device; switching between the MMOG game client and the management tool would require switching between the active foreground process on the computing device.

Besides the inconvenience of switching between the client and management tool, out-of-game methods suffering from several other common drawbacks.

Fake profiles are an undesirable barrier to effective activity scheduling because they are often difficult to distinguish from valid profiles in search results.

The prevalence of fake profiles reduces the trustworthiness of the social network and lowers the chances that a scheduled activity will be successful.

Another drawback of social networks is the lack of user privacy.

Although a user may wish to utilize the communications tools provided for arranging game activities, he may not be willing to disclose the personal information about himself that is required in creating a profile on a gamer social network.

A consequence of out-of-game methods is that registering virtual environment state and character information can be prohibitively labor intensive.

Images