Patent ID: 8535165

Claim:
A method for playing a multi-player computer-based game, comprising: maintaining a database with information about a plurality of players and information about the plurality of players with respect to a plurality of different games that were played on separate computing devices by executing the game program locally; generating a user profile for a player from information in the database, the user profile including at least one of: information about the player provided by the player, feedback from other players about the player, game-related information about the player, and system-related information about the player; comparing information in the user profile for a player to settings in a game session profile for a game session, and when the user profile information matches the game session profile sufficiently, showing the game session to the user as a match result; and outputting a start message to a computing device for the player and to a plurality of computing devices of other players that selected the at least one game session, substantially simultaneously, wherein said message contains information indicative of the configuration settings such that the game programs executing locally can set the configuration settings.