22 Nov Esports and mobile multiplayer games
Linket’s founder just got a patent Barcode-based methods to enhance mobile multiplayer games that is useful for mobile gaming. Are you old enough to have visited the video arcades of 1980? When Space Invaders stormed the world. Invariably there would be an ace player racking up a high score, surrounded by others watching him. And it usually was a him; girls were often a minority. The size of the crowd was limited by how many could physically crowd around him. Maybe 5 or 6. In today’s language we would call it esports. People watching others play a computer game.
But there is a little appreciated irony if we fast forward to today and cellphones. If Jane is playing a mobile game, how many around her can watch? Her screen is so small compared to a video arcade screen that maybe the maximum is 2 others peering over her shoulders. In practice you rarely see even this. Physical esports barely exists for mobile. It is very prominent for sport stadiums, where fans go and watch gamers playing PCs on the stadium floor. The game is projected onto huge flatscreens for the fans. And the most common esports is where fans and gamers are in different places. Notably where fans go to Twitch or YouTube and the gamer can be anywhere else.
The patent solves this problem for web games on the phone.
The figure shows a gamer Jane. She is playing a game on her phone. The game has a server. Bob is near her and wants to watch on his phone. The game has an option called +fan. When she picks it, the game makes a barcode of an id of her game instance. If the game is popular, the server might have many Janes online at the same time, each with her own instance. Her game displays the barcode. She shows this to Bob, who scans it with his phone. After decoding, his phone sees that it is an URL and loads his browser with it. When this URL is sent to the server, it has an id of Jane’s game. So the server sends Bob a screen showing essentially a read-only copy of her game. After which, when she plays her moves, Bob can see this on his phone.
This scales to however many are around her. Bob can help grow Jane’s audience. His read-only screen can have an option to make a barcode. So if he shows it to Sue, she can also watch Jane.
More can be done. Suppose the game is multiplayer and Jane is the first player. She wants Bob to be the second player. The game can have a menu of barcode choices. One choice is to make Bob the second player. Another choice makes him a fan. The figure below shows several choices. For a given choice, the game makes a barcode, which Jane then shows to Bob.
A variant of a fan is an “umpire fan”. This is a user who just watches. But what he sees is not the PoV of a player, but the PoV of the umpire, who usually can see more of the game than a typical player can.
Another possibility is a Handoff. Imagine when Jane is playing a friendly multiplayer game, or even a single player game. The other players can be around her or in remote places. But Bob is near her and he is not in the game, either as player or fan. Jane has to go elsewhere and she cannot continue the game. Bob asks if he can take over her character. Jane says yes. She pulls up the menu below and picks Handoff. A barcode is made and shown to Bob. He scans and decodes it. The server is told from the decoded instruction to close out Jane’s character and to transfer it and any assets it has to Bob’s game instance.
Linket
Suppose Jane has a linket [Gamer Jane]. Just this simple and short string can be in the barcode. Bob scans and decodes it. One immediate benefit of a short string is that the squares inside the barcode are bigger. The barcode can be scanned at a longer distance from Jane. This improves the practical dynamics of her trying to show the barcode to several people around her. Bigger field of view. If Bob now picks the linket, this activates a query to Linket’s Registry to get information about the app to be downloaded and run on his device. As well as a network address either of her device or of the game server. So he can play or watch her.
Contact me for more information. wesboudville@gmail.com
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