Patent ID: 8248404

Claim:
A method for automatically determining an occurrence of an event in a virtual universe, comprising: monitoring a plurality of regions within the virtual universe; and determining an occurrence of an event within at least one of the plurality of regions according to locations of avatars that are on-line in the virtual universe and fields of view that the avatars have from each of the locations, wherein the determining of an occurrence of an event comprises applying an event weighting to the locations of the avatars that are on-line in the virtual universe and to locations of the virtual universe that are in the field of view of the avatars, wherein each event weighting applied to locations that have avatars congregated thereat and locations that are in the field of view of the avatars signifies a probability that an event is occurring at a particular location, specifying a weight multiplier to a particular location within the virtual universe as a function of a number of avatars viewing the location, wherein the weight multiplier affects the event weighting according to the number of avatars viewing the particular location, the more number of avatars viewing the location has a higher weight multiplier that corresponds to a higher event weighting specified for that location, while the less number of avatars viewing the location has a lower weight multiplier that corresponds to a lower event weighting specified for that location, and modifying the event weighting of a location in the virtual universe in response to a determination that the weighting is disproportionate to an average weighting that is historically associated with that location.