Patent ID: 8167694

Claim:
A message output device, comprising: a battle control unit which controls a battle between characters belonging to opposing friend and enemy sides in a virtual space based on a predetermined instruction input; a message storage unit which stores a plurality of main messages matching progress statuses of the battle, and a plurality of sub messages matching winning and losing statuses of the friend and enemy sides; a main message acquisition unit which acquires a main message specified in accordance with a progress status of the battle; a sub message acquisition unit which detects winning and losing statuses of the friend and the enemy sides which change in accordance with a progress status of the battle at each predetermined timing, and acquires a sub message matching the winning and losing statuses that are detected; a message output unit which outputs, based on a predetermined condition, the main message acquired by the main message acquisition unit and the sub message acquired by the sub message acquisition unit; and a retaining unit that at least temporarily retains the sub message acquired by the sub message acquisition unit; wherein a life duration time is set at least for each sub message retained in the retaining unit; a message deletion unit that deletes, from among the sub messages retained in the retaining unit, a sub message whose life duration time has expired without outputting the sub message, a priority order is set for each main message and each sub message; and the message output unit outputs, in an order based on the priority order, the acquired main message and the sub message having been retained in the retaining unit.