Method of developing the activity of an on-line game site

Abstract

The on-line game site comprises a question engine coupled with a plurality of terminals controlled by respective players, for sending predefined questions to the players and for receiving answers to the questions from the players. The site awards or does not award prizes to the players as a function of the answers received. The activity of the site is measured by a traffic index representative of the number of players that have played the game over a given time interval. The method comprises: a) displaying, together with the questions sent to the players, paid-for advertising insertions, established on the base of a given rate; b) evaluating the receipts associated with said paid-for, advertising insertions; c) establishing an endowment for sharing amongst a plurality of prizes awardable over a given period of time, the endowments being a function of the level of said receipts; d) increasing the receipts, and correspondingly said endowment, as a result in the increase in the traffic index; and e) continuing, and developing site activity by reiterating step d) above. The answers received from the various players are subjected to scoring involving a technique of characterization in which each answer is compared with a battery of N weighted criteria, or to a table that is a function of rank and of difference compared with a reference answer. A performance index is allocated by summing the partial scores. The game may include classifying the frequency with which the names of artistic, cultural, or historical celebrities appear on a search engine. With a few hundreds of such names, it is possible to obtain very fine graininess, i.e. ability to discriminate between players, that is well above 10100 different combinations.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.