Systems and methods for online, real-time, social gaming

Abstract

Systems and methods for designing a social gaming platform in which participants compete to determine who best predicts the outcomes of conditions relating to activities at sporting events, TV shows, or other types of events. In a game, players compete with other players in the same group or in different groups via a gaming platform that employs a live digitized information feed from a contemporaneous event (while an event is currently in-progress) in addition to historical information relating to the event available from third party sources. Such information allow players (and also the system) to predict outcomes of conditions relating to activities at events, wherein such conditions are either user-contemplated, pre-stored in the system, or generated live (by the system or users). Additionally, embodiments of the present system utilize geo-location information to enable creation of user-groups based on the physical location of system users and social network affiliation of users.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 418,590, filed Dec. 1, 2010, and entitled “Systems and Methods for Online, Real-time, Social Gaming”, which is incorporated herein by reference as if set forth herein in its entirety.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present systems and methods relate generally to online, real-time social gaming, and more particularly to systems and methods involved in the design of a mobile and web-based social gaming platform for players to interact and play online games, wherein aspects of the online game are determined by live digitized data feeds from happenings at contemporaneous events (while events are currently in progress) in addition to historical data gathered from such types of events. The disclosed systems and methods allow user interactions in real-time or almost real-time including the ability to pose questions, predict outcomes, answer questions, a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008]Briefly described, and according to one embodiment, aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to systems and methods for designing a social gaming platform that allows users to create online games in which participants compete to predicts the outcomes of specific conditions relating to activities at sporting events, TV award shows, or other types of events. For example, in one aspect and as will be understood from the discussions that follow, conditions can be in the form of multiple-choice questions, free-form questions that have answers comprising a few lines, tournament brackets, and the like. Therefore, in such examples, a game involves participants (OGS users) predicting the answers of questions. In an exemplary aspect, questions (or, more generally, conditions) comprise real-time in-event questions created by the OGS or by system users, or even, pre-stored in the system.

[0009]According to one aspect and described in greater detail herein, an Online Gaming System (OGS) receives digitized live event data feed from on or more third party sources. Additio

Problems solved by technology

However, conventional systems do not enable participants in an online game to have access to a data teed of the happenings at the event in real-time.

Again, most traditional online gaming platforms do not provide real-time sporting and event data feeds.

Even further, historical data relating to sports events (e.g., from past seasons, or tournaments), or other any other form of historical event-related data are not provided to users of online gaming platforms.

Moreover, most online gaming platforms are not technologically sophisticated because they lack statistical decision making tools that are usually helpful in most online games, e.g., they lack the ability of predictive outcome modeling of certain conditions or characteristics of events.

Additionally, they are also not easily customizable to according to players' preferences.

Therefore, there is a long-felt but unresolved need for a system or method for designing a social gaming platform that solves the aforementioned problems.

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