Patent ID: 8409010

Claim:
A computing system for coordinating massively multiplayer games, comprising: a network connection configured to enable two-way communication with a player group of at least thousands of remotely located computing devices; a logic subsystem configured to execute instructions; and a data-holding subsystem holding instructions executable by the logic subsystem to: send an event-driven request to answer a question to each remotely located computing device of the player group, the event-driven request being sent responsive to events associated with a remotely located computing device of a featured player of the player group that vary in timing based on actions taken by the featured player during a current round of a game; receive answer responses to the event-driven request from at least some of the remotely located computing devices of the player group; aggregate received responses to the event-driven request; and synchronize game play to produce a game experience concurrently shared in real-time by all remotely located computing devices of the player group based on aggregated responses received from at least some of the remotely located computing devices of the player group, at a predetermined time, the game experience including a game view and game sounds representative of a virtual setting in which at least a featured group of players of the player group including the featured player and at least one hundred players collectively competing against the featured player are virtually represented to all players of the player group by virtual avatars in the virtual setting for the current round of the game, wherein the featured player and the at least one hundred players are selected for the current round based on player statistics aggregated from game play in one or more previous rounds of the game.