Massively ambivalent

Bobby pointed me to this article from 2005 analyzing the protocol spoken between SWAT4 (some computer game I have never heard of) and Massive's advertising server network.

I'm honestly not sure to what extent I can comment on the article, since i don't recall if i signed an NDA with Massive or not, but regardless of its level of accuracy, the piece summons up a familiar odd mix of emotions - pride, regret, envy.

Back when I lived in Brooklyn in '04, I worked with Alexander Interactive to build the server system for Massive's streaming advertising network. Basically, the concept is that when you register your PC or console game, it has enough generic demographic info about you to ask Massive to send ads targeted to you based on that info in real time and place them into the game in predefined locations. So let's say you're playing a network-enabled racing game and you're doing laps. Maybe the first time you zoom by a roadside billboard it has a Coke ad. Then the next time you go by, it's changed to a Gap ad. The ad media itself is not packaged with the game but rather pulled off of a server somewhere by the game after it was told by Massive that it is one of the most preferred ads to show you.

The project was an extremely interesting technical challenge, since it has many moving parts, each of which has to perform extremely well in order to keep thousands (or more) simultaneously played games getting their ads in real time. It was the first system I'd architected on my own that was more than your traditional database-backed web application. And I am still proud of the fact that we delivered the project on time in good working order, and that Massive launched and were very successful (eventually sold to Microsoft for 8 figures).

At the same time, there's a big part of me that hates the lack of restraint exercised by the advertising industry in polluting the web and invading our personal space with advertising. I recognize that advertising dollars are responsible for most of the interesting things created by our culture and am resigned to its existence, but I feel like I shouldn't be directly aiding and abetting - especially when the target of the advertising is the gaming audience, of which I am an enthusiastic member. So I definitely feel a bit of shame at the fact that increasingly over time my friends will fire up their Xboxes and get ads shoved down their throat, ads that I'm literally directly responsible for sending to them. That is certainly one major reason why I now work for a software nonprofit building software that I hope will make peoples' lives a little better. I joke about it, but I really do think I have something of a karmic debt to pay down.

And of course, I'm totally jealous of those butt heads over at Massive who made bank on the software I wrote as a consultant ;)