A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, receiving at a computer device a plurality of stimulus signals generated by one or more gaming accessory devices of a gamer controlling a gaming application, generating a plurality of gaming stimulations based on the plurality of stimulus signals, generating a plurality of gaming action results from the gaming application responsive to the plurality of gaming stimulations, combining the plurality of gaming action results and the plurality of gaming stimulations to generate a plurality of hardware statistics associated with the gamer, and transmitting to a social network the plurality of hardware statistics associated with the gamer.

A method by which a streaming interactive video user session is handed off from one streaming interactive video server to another without noticeable disruption to the video stream or the user interactivity.

A network game system includes a server apparatus and a plurality of video game apparatuses connected to the server apparatus. A party includes player characters of a plurality of players. When the party battles with an opponent character, the server apparatus simultaneously transmits movie playback information to each video game apparatus for starting playback of a movie. Each of the players can skip the movie at a desired timing. A screen is displayed on each video game apparatus that has skipped the movie until the battle starts. When information is received from each video game apparatus that indicates playback of the movie has ended, the server apparatus simultaneously transmits battle start information to each video game apparatus.

Recommending game-playing friends or buddies, including: receiving at least one of playing habits, behaviors, and preferences of online game players; selecting a subset of the online game players matching a set number of criteria of the at least one of playing habits, behaviors, and preferences that are similar or complementary; and recommending the subset of the online game players selected as matching a set number of criteria as game-playing friends or buddies. Keywords include improved game experience, social building, and community growing.

This game system (1) includes multiple game machines (2A, 2B) connected to a network (5), allows a player of a game machine to select one of selective items on a game prepared in advance, and allows the player to play a game having content reflecting the selected item. This game system is provided with a device (32) for storing relation data for determining whether or not a predetermined connection exists between players, a device (11) for determining the selection state pertaining to the items selected by the players on the game machines, a device (11, 12) for determining, based on the relation data, other players that have the predetermined connection with the player, and a device (21) which, when the player is making the selection from the selective items, presents the player making the selection with the selection state of other players having the predetermined connection with that player.

Systems, methods, and computer program products to provide responses to emergent group activities in an interactive environment, by monitoring actions of one or more avatars in the interactive environment, the one or more avatars being controlled by a respective user, detecting a first action matching a first action property in a first group activity template for a first group activity, of a plurality of group activity templates, determining that the first group activity is occurring in the interactive environment, and issuing to one or more components of the interactive environment, an indication to perform a respective predefined operation.

Embodiments of systems presented herein may identify users to include in a match plan. A parameter model may be generated to predict the retention time of a set of users. A queue of potential users, a set of teammates, and/or opponents may be selected from a queue of waiting users. User information for the set of teammates and/or opponents may be provided to the parameter model to generate a predicted retention time. The set of teammates and/or opponents may be approved if the predicted retention time meets a predetermined threshold. Advantageously, by creating a match plan based on retention rates, the engagement and/or retention level for a number of users may be improved compared to existing multiplayer matching systems.

The present invention relates to an application that is configured to be operated in a multi-participant environment on a computer network. The application manages participants in an online session of a multi-user application so that if one of the participants exits the session, the session can continue without interruption. The application initiates an online session of the multi-user application, wherein the online session includes two or more participants comprised of network computers that are communicatively linked to a computer network. If the application detects that a first participant has disconnected from the online session, wherein the first participant is responsible for managing certain managerial functionality associated with the running of the multi-user application, then the application broadcasts a notification to existing participants of the online session over the communication network, thereby notifying the existing participants that the first participant has disconnected from the online session. The initiating application then re-assigns the functionality associated with the first participant to an existing participant of the online session. The participants can be communicating in a peer-to-peer arrangement or can be performing server duties in a client-server arrangement.

The present disclosure provides a unit grouping method and device, a storage medium, and an electronic device. The method includes: in response to a grouping instruction, an operation state for grouping the at least one unit in a predetermined display area is activated; in response to a first selection instruction, at least one target unit to be grouped is selected from the at least one unit; in response to a second selection instruction, a target group is selected from at least one pre-created group; and the at least one target unit to be grouped is grouped into the target group. By means of embodiments of the present disclosure, the problems of small player operation space and low game operability in the related art are solved.

Various aspects of the subject technology relate to systems, methods, and machine-readable media for contextual matchmaking. The method includes receiving player information for a plurality of players, the player information for each player comprising at least one of player statistics, player tendencies, and player preferences. The method also includes generating player archetypes for each of the plurality of players based on the player information, each of the player archetypes comprising at least one premier scenario. The method also includes matching the players based on the player archetypes. The method also includes generating in-game objectives based on the player archetypes.