Enhancement of collective experience

Abstract

The phenomenon of collective human experience in crowds and audiences is rooted in the thrill of sharing the experience with others in person. This invention enhances collective experience by providing a new kind of communal activity, overcoming the chief difficulty of prior communal activities that attempt to enable a crowd to collectively pursue a unified goal: namely the inability of the participants to sense or believe in their own contribution to the combined results. In this invention, the credibility gap is overcome by periodically limiting control to a selected group small enough to allow the audience to assess the contribution to gameplay. These gameplay focus changes can be made in immediate response to the live crowd behavior, endorsing the validity of the linkage between gameplay and audience movements. Identifying and switching between the smaller groups and the larger groups during continuous gameplay demonstrates and confirms the impression of active control by the group members.

1 . A way of producing gameplay is introduced such that an audience is assembled and controls computer games according to audience body movement and the audience members view the resulting gameplay on displays, wherein the improvement consists of selecting a subdivision of audience members and assigning gameplay control to the selected subdivision while displaying indications depicting which members have been selected through subdivision to control gameplay, comprising: 
 a) means for assembling an audience whereby such means are selected from the group consisting of 
 1) means for providing tickets for assigned seating  
 2) means for providing admittance to an enclosed area  
 3) means for promoting attendance at a place and time  
 4) means for attracting an audience with enticing displays  
   b) means for acquiring photographic sequential audience image data from the assembled audience    c) means for processing said audience image data into audience movement data    d) means for executing gameplay according to said movement data    e) means for displaying said gameplay    f) means for selecting for gameplay control a subdivision of said audience    g) means for indicating the members of the selected audience subdivision that are operational in controlling gameplay    whereby an audience operates gameplay by changing body position, and the operation of the interactive linkage is validated.    
   
   
       2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the audience assembly step includes coincident sports events selected from the group consisting of football, basketball, hockey, soccer, gymnastics, baseball, tennis.  
   
   
       3 . The method of  claim 1  with gameplay coaching provided to the audience.  
   
   
       4 . The method of  claim 1  with template comparison for deriving audience motion data.  
   
   
       5 . The method of  claim 1  with spatially correlated vector tracking for deriving audience motion data.  
   
   
       6 . The method of  claim 1  where the gameplay display includes paid sponsorship elements.  
   
   
       7 . The method of  claim 1  where selection is by graded quality of gameplay.  
   
   
       8 . A method of game playing such that an assembled audience operates computer games according to audience body movement and the audience members are shown the progress of the game on displays, wherein the improvement consists of selecting a subdivision of audience members and assigning game control to the subdivision while displays indicate the members of the subdivision controlling the game, comprising: 
 a) assembling an audience    b) providing a computer processor    c) providing means for camera imaging of the assembled audience that generates data in digital form    d) processing by computer processor said audience image data into movement data    e) executing gameplay according to said movement data    f) displaying said gameplay    g) selecting a subdivision of said movement data    h) indicating which audience members are operational in the selected subdivision of movement data    whereby an audience operates games by changing body position, and the operation of the interactive linkage is validated.    
   
   
       9 . The method of  claim 8  wherein the audience assembly step includes coincident sports events selected from the group consisting of football, basketball, hockey, soccer, gymnastics, baseball, tennis.  
   
   
       10 . The method of  claim 8  with gameplay coaching provided to the audience.  
   
   
       11 . The method of  claim 8  with template comparison for deriving audience motion data.  
   
   
       12 . The method of  claim 8  with spatially correlated vector tracking for deriving audience motion data.  
   
   
       13 . The method of  claim 8  where the gameplay display includes paid sponsorship elements.  
   
   
       14 . The method of  claim 8  where selection is by graded quality of gameplay.