Patent ID: 7048630

Claim:
A method of capturing players' images in real-time for incorporation into an electronic casino game comprising a reel simulation or an electronic casino card game, wherein the electronic casino game comprises multiple player capability and further comprises a playing portion associated with each player, the method comprising: receiving a value payment from each of a plurality of players; providing a notification to the plurality of players that their images will be captured, wherein the notification comprises at least one of a visual signal and an audible signal; using a camera to capture real-time images of each of the players who are located within a field of view of the camera; scanning the real-time images for facial features, wherein the facial features comprise at least one of a chin, a nose, a mouth and eyes; rejecting the real-time images if the real-time images do not include a minimum number of facial features; cropping the unrejected real-time images to create cropped images consisting essentially of images of players' faces without any background images; electronically displaying in real-time at least a portion of the cropped images on a video display associated with the casino game such that the cropped image of each player's face is combined with a video depiction of a figure to create a video character image associated with each player, wherein the video character image associated with each player comprises a video depiction of the player's face imposed on the video depiction of the figure and is displayed in the playing portion associated with each player; freezing the cropped images to create still images of each player; and displaying the still images of each player on the video display.