A system is for assessing life and death in go games played on a computer, and includes an input-receiving unit for receiving input from a player, an assessment unit that assesses the life and death of target stones, and an output unit for outputting the results of the assessment in the assessment unit. The assessment unit receives input specifying one or more target stones, specifies the points on the board where a boundary and a board edge are within a prescribed distance from each other, revises the assessment area by expanding the assessment area, assesses an optional stone in the post-revision assessment area to be alive if said stone escapes and was a target stone, and if said stone was not a target stone, performs a life and death assessment after adding the condition that said stone is not captured and a target stone connected to said stone is alive.

A method for providing electronic content for a learning appliance is disclosed. The method includes selecting a learning appliance from a set of different learning appliances on a host site. The set of learning appliances is previously selected from a group of learning appliances. The electronic content package is received and is loaded into the learning appliance.

A system, method, and computer program product for collaborative online gaming, including at least one of providing a central repository master browser system; providing an experience calibrated match-making service; providing a dynamic multiplayer server component auto deployment and aggregation system; providing a lobby centric simultaneous and collaborative client game play launching feature; and providing a video game screen over-layer technology giving users access to a control interface while inside a video game being played.

A method is disclosed to play a multiplayer online game. The method provides a handset and a multiplayer game stored on a server, where that server comprises (N) user profiles including the (i)th user profile comprising the (i)th game status and the (i)th digital signature assigned to the (i)th user, wherein the (i)th user is one of the (N) users. The method establishes a communication link between the handset and the server, such that the (i)th user can play the multiplayer game, using the handset and the (i)th game status, with one or more other users in communication with the server. The method downloads to the handset the game software and the (i)th user profile comprising the (i)th game status and the (i)th digital signature, before discontinuing the communication link between the handset and the server.

Players input their messages in their video game apparatuses and the messages are once collected at a server apparatus, thereafter they are distributed to all video game apparatuses from the game server apparatus. In a display screen of each video game apparatus, a chat window is displayed in order to display messages exchanged between the players on a game screen including a field and characters of the game. The chat window is sequentially enlarged up to a preset maximum number of lines when a new message is received from the game server apparatus. The chat window is sequentially reduced to the preset minimum number of lines when a predetermined time passes without any reception of new message or when the player performs a specific operation.

According to one embodiment, a content providing system of a terminal in a content providing system, a content server is requested to provide specific content. The specific content and a reward item associated with the specific content are received from the content server. A reward item list representing reward items associated with content having content providers different from each other is generated. The reward item list is displayed. Multiple content are received from a plurality of content providers. A corresponding reward item is determined for each received content. A specific content provide request is received from the terminal. The requested content and a reward item corresponding to the requested content are then transmitted to the terminal.

Handheld location based games are provided in which a user's physical location correlates to the virtual location of a virtual character on a virtual play field.

Augmented Reality (AR) systems are provided in which video game indicia are overlaid onto a user's physical environment. A landscape detector is provided that may obtain information about the user's landscape, in addition to the user's location, in order to provide overlaying information to an AR head-mounted display and control information to non-user controlled video game characters.

Methods and devices are presented for facilitating anonymous gameplay in multi-state, multiplayer games, such as poker. A gaming server may allow players to anonymously join instances of a game. The gaming server may represent an anonymous player to himself or herself using a non-anonymous alias, while the gaming server may represent the anonymous player to the other players or entities using an anonymous alias. Additionally, the gaming server may record events occurring in the game, and provide similarly anonymized versions of these events to other players and entities.

A gaming system installable in a urinal or toilet in which a removably attached pressure and location sensor assembly can be wirelessly coupled to a data server. The data server can include a user interface allowing the user to initiate a gaming session, such as through a touch screen monitor positioned above or nearby the urinal. The data server can collect and store data from the pressure and location sensor. The data server can be coupled to a plurality of touch screen monitors and pressure and location sensor assemblies for providing a multi-user gaming environment. Collected and processed data can be presented in real time on the touch screen monitors and can be stored in a database.

Systems, apparatus and methods for enabling a mobile station to control a virtual world being executed on a console system are described. The method can include establishing a communication link between the mobile station and a console system, identifying user interface characteristics of the mobile station, and providing a controller application to the mobile station, the controller application being based on the identified user interface characteristics and configured to transform user interface inputs into controller commands. The method can further include receiving signals containing data representing the controller commands from the mobile station over the communication link and determining a sequence of events of the virtual world based on the received controller commands. In one aspect, the controller application can execute in the context of an application on the mobile station.