Methods And Devices For Maintaining Sessions Based On Presence Status Information

摘要

Sessions, such as on-line gaming sessions, are maintained by proxy agents on behalf of users even when the users are inactive. The agents, along with other components, form a novel “always-on” architecture that greatly reduces the time it takes to initiate and carry out sessions.

主权项

1. A method for forming one or more groups associated with one or more on-line gaming sessions comprising:
receiving one or more identities of one or more third party users; determining the availability of the identified third party users; comparing profiles of the identified and available third party users, with attributes of a request to initiate an on-line gaming session of a game by a user, to determine the gaming skill level of the third party users; forming a gaming group containing those third party users that are not currently involved in a gaming session of the game, and have the substantially same gaming skill level as that required by the request from the compared, identified and available users along with the user that initiated the request; and initiating the on-line gaming session of the game for the formed gaming group.