blog.area51.org

I am a former employee of a hugely successful, hugely powerful game developer.  Let’s call it “Snowball Productions.”  From 2005 till mid-2006, I was a developer on their top-ranking, highest-grossing title, “BattleLand.”

When I got hired at Snowball, I nearly crapped my pants.  As a developer, it is the pinnacle of kick-assness to work there. Anyway, I was so friggin’ psyched about working there that I moved really close to the office I was working in just in case I wanted to spend weekends there.

It was during one of my weekends at work that I met this guy Dave.  Dave was some kind of junior art director who I heard got hired as a favor to the sister of one of the guys who started Snowball.  Dave was an annoying-ass hipster doofus so I generally avoided him at all costs.  But, this weekend, we had to collaborate on a project so I was spending mucho time with this dicktard.

Around 10 pm, we were taking a break — eating pizza and enjoying some kine bud.  Then freak boy Dave started telling me this fucked up story about one of the guys who founded the company.  It’s a typical start-up story: couple guys meet at a U Cal college, are super smart, love gaming, and come up with a concept that actually gets off the ground.  They get banked and work their asses off to produce what’ll one day be the most-played game of its kind.

The interesting part, though, was that the kid Dave told me one of the guys who founded the company and created the first version of the game was basically in cahoots with the US government.  The US Military, to be precise.  The military had a special unit devoted to researching the effects of virtual realities, the Internet, and gaming on youth.  The government caught wind that there were these geeks in Anaheim who just got a boatload of cash to produce an online game where people interact and can kill each other.  According to Dave, it fascinated them…they were really curious about how the game would work; how the people would interact; and what effects, if any, would intensive game play have on young people.

Long story short, Dave claims that the military sent someone from this research unit to Cali to meet with the game guys.  During this meeting, one of the founders accepted a ‘government grant’ a.k.a. wads of cash to allow the military to place pro-American, anti-Islamic subliminal messaging and imagery into the game content.  They also gave the military access to their customers’ demographic information, addresses, etc. in return for the ‘grant.’

What’s most disturbing, though, is that they allowed the military to monitor people playing in free game trials Snowball held at trade shows.  Peoples’ retinas, brain waves, and pulse rates would be monitored during various points of game play, unbeknownst to the player.  This would tell the Fed researchers which people responded most positively (read: perversely enjoying killing shit) to in-game battles, and how their body unconsciously responded to various stimuli (like the subliminal messaging, bloody battles, etc.).

I don’t know what they ever did–if anything–with the data they collected.  Not sure if it became part of their recruitment efforts post-9/11 but if Dave wasn’t just fucking with me, this is really messed up.

Anyway, I thought you’d like hearing this story since you are so paranoid

Peace out.