Interview with Battlefield Advertising Company

Found this via PlanetBattlefield. Some interesting info.

Gmasutra Interview with IGA

IGA's In-Game Ad Capture Specifics wrote:

Specifically, IGA's software uses the IP address for geotargeting of in-game ads (so that European ads are not shown to those in the U.S., for example). It also creates a unique user number that's generated locally, and is able to re-identify the gamer when he next appears online.

In addition, IGA's in-game ad solution does capture the time of day that the user started to play each gaming session - Townsend mentioned, as an example, that "if the brief says 'Males 18 to 34'", the ads may only be served between 6pm and 9pm on a weekday evening or similar, to replicate 'primetime' viewing.

The time that each ad impression takes place is also recorded by IGA, alongside what type of ad content it was (billboard, megaboard, or video stream), the duration (how long was the ad seen for), the size of the ad relative to the player, and the angle of deflection (what angle the ad is viewed at).

First work-arounds already coming in. Can't believe that it would work quite so easily but who knows.

Some PBFers wrote:Now this is not absolutely confirmed mind you, but it was posted on the BF2142 board, and I thought since it seems important, I would post it here:

You can block access to the sypware monitoring servers. IP addresses
72.32.5.0 - 72.32.5.15
Port 9961 so far

This may change in the future obviously.

In Reply To #1

Its funny those ip's resolve to

100686-app9.hydra.igaww.com

What is igaww.com?
http://www.ingameadvertising.com/

Interesting to say the least. As I mentioned before, I have no problem with this if it does not make any difference in your game speeds and it remains as they stated, anonymous. If it avoids the game turning into a monthly subscription type of game, I am all for it.

Since they are getting even more revenue out of the game though, they really should fix more bugs and spend a bit more time cleaning the code and adding features and game types.

Interesting..... Even more interesting, since it uses a specific port, you should be able to block that port without blocking the IP's. Hmmmm.....

DICE Development Team wrote:Posting on behalf of the Dev Team
--------------------------------
Greetings,

We would like to provide more information on in-game advertising in Battlefield 2142. To try and help everyone better understand it, here is how it works.

The in- game advertisement is respectful of players' privacy: it never accesses files not directly related to the game, and it does not capture personal data such as cookies, account login detail, gameplay behaviour or surfing history. As it is an integrated part of Battlefield 2142 and not a separate program, it only runs when the game is running.

Because BF2142 delivers ads by region, the IP address of the player is used to determine the region of the player and helps serve ads by region and language; for instance, a player in Paris will be presented with ads in French. Note that this IP address is not stored on the advertisement server and is not repurposed for other uses.

A unique ID number is anonymously assigned the first time the player joins a Battlefield 2142 online game. It is stored locally on the PC but is not linked to any personal details.

The in-game advertisement gathers what we call “impression data”, such as location of the billboard in the game or duration of advertisement impression. It
helps see how many people have seen an ad – but not who has seen it.

We are also conscious that the advertisement shouldn’t distract the player from the overall gaming experience, so all ads fit in the unique environment of each level in the game. The content of the ads is also controlled to ensure that no offensive content is displayed in Battlefield 2142.

We all hope that this explanation will address recent concerns on the advertisement in Battlefield 2142.

See you on the Battlefield.

Your Dice Live Team

I also found this: http://nationalcheeseemporium.org/
It's an in-depth look at similar ingame advertising within the SWAT4 game. Interesting read, although I don't really understand what a lot of the code means.

It is just the state of things these days. Look at DVD's even. Hell I payed $20 for a DVD to have to sit through a movie preview, or worse, a commercial! It happens all the time. Placement products in most movies and TV. I pay a ton for my cable bill each month and still have tons of commercials. I would bitch if I did not have a TiVo and had to actually watch them 😛

The bottom line is everyone wants ad generated revenue streams. Most web sites these days, even this one, uses ads. I understand the site is not charging to use it so I understand that. I am just saying it is everywhere anymore.

I think I am buying the game now. Enough said. 🙂

Besides someone here has to play and review it. 😉

What next though... there was talk about a rootkit that allowed punkbuster to watch processes. I mean really, F EA this is where I draw the line. I will NOT install adware on my computer, I will not allow it to exist on my computer. There is a reason for firewalls. So I can circumvent it, I do not want EA to believe for one second that this is ok with me. I also don't want to pay for a game that does this. What do you get from the ads? NOTHING. What do you lose? Privacy, bandwidth ...etc. People bitch constanly now when their ping goes to 40ms... what will it be like when you are pushing 30k images to your machine, and pushing back a small sata base of angle of deflection each time you viewed thier ad? O wait EA "fixed" that they removed "ping" and gave you a color system. I don't care what others do, but I won't buy this piece of adware despite how fuzzy and happy EA spins it to be. If other games go this route I will stop gaming. I hope others follow suit before other games do this. Give them your $50 and you are telling them it's ok.

Paladin wrote:
Besides someone here has to play and review it. 😉

That would be great!

I wish games had a TIVO function, you could skip past the spawn times and the waiting for the last sniper to die when all of your flags are gone 😛

I wonder if it would be possible to play a map without looking at an ad? When you play the game Pal could you post up some pictures showing the ads, where they are and let us know. Wouldn't it be funny if the ad locations were in places where no one went near them? I'm guessing that won't be the case, but on every map in BF2 there are locations where action occurs that wasn't forseen by the map developer. I wonder if you could get everyone on a server to not look at ads or route themselves around them.

Are there unranked servers for BF2142? Will they still have ads? Will people be able to do custom maps and mods? I guess you could play them without having to deal with the advertisements.

I wasn't intending this thread as a continued debate about whether or not to buy the game, but more in the interest of full information after posting the initial "scare" about it being spyware. That, and to discuss the benefits/costs of having advertising in the game.

What does advertising in game bring to it and how does it benefit the player?
On a battlefield I would think it doesn't bring anything to the game. In reality (if we dare go there) any advertising medium is going to be blasted away by stray bombs and bullets. I know this isn't reality, but they did state that they wanted the ads to fit the "context" of the location when they were first talking about them. On the question of what does this bring to the player - I don't see any benefit from that either. What can be legitimately called a benefit for the player? A lower cost game? Free content?

In a sports arena it makes more sense. We are all used to seeing that and it fits the context and it wouldn't be something that would distract the player by being incongruous with its surroundings.

I said it before, if the ads meant additional free maps, then I would consider it as a way to pay for more content. As it stands, it's being shoved down our throats and if we don't take a stand now, it will only get worse.

On a side note, if they would have ever released BFTV, then this ad thing would make sense. You could show ads to the people watching the matches rather than the players in the game. Sort of like the digital ads they put on sports stadium during live broadcasts. That I could live with.

It's not the ads that bother me, it's that they are putting it on client side. They have opened the door to whatever mischief they want to do in the future.

EVERYTHING they say they need it for could be done server side. EVERYTHING.

Consider that for a moment.

Now ask yourself why are they going to the trouble of putting it on the client side?

It's not that I expect them to be scanning my favorites, my history and my cache right away, but IMO it's just a matter of time.

If they would come out & say "hey we screwed up, we're putting out a new fix to put all the ad placement information on server side" I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Think about it. While that game is running, it could do anything and their written thing is so vague, it could be expanded to do nearly anything ....

Just thinking here. From a technical standpoint would it not be hard on the server to have to get your data/location and then go out, pull the ads then push them to you? Would that not be major server work? Especially for 64 players and each time it hit spots where it had to calculate all this info for various users all over the world. I am assuming not everyone sees the same ads at the same time so...

On the client side the game server just plays as normal, when it hits a spot where an ad should go it just inserts it from your side. So I am guessing it is for efficiency. That is the way I would do it. Your browser keeps cookies and temp files local for the same reason.

The BF community is pretty smart and I doubt anything sneaky would be so for very long. We will hear about it, and people will find ways around it. You KNOW that 🙂

😄 😄 😄 Penny Arcade from today 😄

G4 Video on BF2142 Advertising

Good discussion of the issue.

Sarge wrote:
G4 Video on BF2142 Advertising

Good discussion of the issue.

Wow what a total crap server. I never had problems with Google video or youtube like this at work here. It kept buffering and then going to the next clip, buffering, go to next clip. Sheesh!

I will try to play it when I get home, maybe my FIOS connection will be better. 😉

yeah, it buffered a couple of times for me as well.

I think that there are a few issues here, and like was stated in the discussion, they are bigger than just BF2142.

1) erosion of privacy - the in-game advertising is a small dent, especially when compared (like Sessler said) to the complete disregard for Habeus Corpus that was recently signed into law. It is also indicative of the general trend of small bites out of our personal privacy being made by the government (ostensibly for security concerns) and by businesses for marketing.

2) What does the player get for seeing the ads - This is unknown at this point, but I don't see them lowering the price of the game, touting that they are going to release free content, or provide any other benefit for the gamers. I calculated that BF2 grossed over $100 million. A game can't cost that much to produce (can it?), especially with something like 2142 which is essentially an optimized mod of BF2. So what do the ads provide other than padding for EA's (in this case) wallet? We will likely be seeing this repeated in other games in the future, so this isn't intended to just bash EA, but as general commentary on the practice.

Everything else that has ads in it, the viewer/user receives some clear benefit, or you pay to not see advertising. You subscribe to cable TV, you pay for the service, the ads pay for the programming. If you get HBO, you pay to not see commercials. Buy a newspaper - it costs a lot more than 50 cents to make - advertising cuts the cost for the user. I used Eudora and Opera with ads because I was too cheap to pay for the paid version. If I was given the choice to pay $25 for a game and see ads vs. $50 and not see ads, I would at least have an option, and might choose to see the ads to save a few dollars. I also might not.

Edit: Saw that the Eudora is going open source the other day. Cool! I always liked that email software.

Cannot really argue with you on those points man. I pretty much agree with you. All I know is I wanted to play it and am 😉

I do not actually like the advertising added to it. As I said, so far, I have not seen it anyway. I am viewing it this way; If the ads do appear and we do get new maps or something extra later on because of it, that will be cool. If not then I will re-think this for the next game.

I am viewing it as an experiment of sorts. Lets see where it goes and what becoms of it. If we get zero benefit from it in later maps or booster packs, then I really doubt I will buy 2152 😉 Then again.... 😛

BTW I pay a LOT for cable and still see ads on most channels. Even if you do get premium channels you still gets ads on the majority of the other channels. It is the cable company being greedy. Sure they have to pay fee's etc.. but should that not trickle down to less commercials for me?

Paladin wrote:I am viewing it as an experiment of sorts. Lets see where it goes and what becoms of it. If we get zero benefit from it in later maps or booster packs, then I really doubt I will buy 2152 😉 Then again.... 😛

I am happy to let you experiment 😀

Paladin wrote:I pay a LOT for cable and still see ads on most channels. Even if you do get premium channels you still gets ads on the majority of the other channels. It is the cable company being greedy

It's not just the cable company in those cases - not that they aren't greedy bastards or anything 😛
Some of the ads pay for the specific network to produce the show and broadcast and especially to offset the huge salaries of the cast on some of the more popular shows. With cable and satellite, you are also paying to subsidize those channels that are packaged with your service that you don't watch like the 15 gazillion religious and shopping channels. That gives me an idea for a new network - the Christian Home Religion and Interactive Shopping TV (CHRIST). Get your religion and cheap doo-dads in one place.