Android Alpha Begins
Ordinary business dealings between companies rarely went smoothly when the only contact was a single fax. Especially when it wasn’t an urgent matter requiring constant back-and-forth, proposals from small firms to larger ones were often ignored outright. Even face-to-face pitches were hit-or-miss; a lone fax stood almost no chance. Yet none of these usual rules applied between ID Technology and Electronic Arts.
Electronic Arts had grown two, nearly three times larger thanks to a single killer title that had come from ID Technology. Their treatment of the developer was naturally different from everyone else.
“Sir! A fax from ID Technology. It contains a new business proposal.”
The secretary brought the freshly arrived document straight to President Hawkins. She had been instructed to handle anything from ID Technology personally. In the past, Hawkins could have received faxes directly in his office, but Electronic Arts had doubled in size, and both its organization and environment had changed dramatically. A single title had made them this big; if that title’s momentum faded, they would shrink just as quickly. That was why Hawkins was now scrambling to find new products that could sustain their revenue. Business trips had increased, workloads had piled up, and even when faxes arrived at his office, he often couldn’t check them immediately. As a result, faxes and calls were routed to the secretary who worked exclusively in the office, who would then report to him.
“Give it here.”
Hawkins, who had been intently reviewing a game proposal from a small developer, stopped and accepted the fax. His eyes carried clear anticipation at the mention of a new proposal from ID Technology. After all, he had never once been disappointed by any business venture involving them.
Keyboard Warrior was still selling well long after its release, and Wolfenstein, developed by ID Software—their game subsidiary—even in its alpha version, had no obvious flaws. Hawkins himself had played it and felt its intense addictiveness. The only regret was that there was just a single stage. The fact that it even supported multiplayer over a network meant many employees kept playing the alpha version repeatedly.
Curious about what fortune-bringing ID Technology was proposing this time, Hawkins focused on the document. It contained a bold, expectation-exceeding offer.
“Adware?”
Though the fax was short, Hawkins read it several times, mulling over its meaning. He understood the concept: users could use a DOS-like system for free in exchange for viewing advertisements. However, he still couldn’t quite picture exactly how the ads would be displayed. Nor was it clear how this DOS-like system would be distributed.
“The effect will definitely be there!”
He was certain that advertising directly to computer users would be highly effective. Until now, ads had typically been scattered indiscriminately at unspecified masses—television commercials, posters in retail stores, and so on. The closest thing to targeted advertising had been placements in game magazines, and even those commanded high rates. Yet it was difficult to measure whether the ads actually worked. The best they could do was survey buyers about what influenced their game purchases.
Android Alpha, the adware DOS, was different. It was the very DOS that gamers would use themselves. Though he couldn’t confirm it from the fax alone, the system would display an ad image for several seconds upon boot completion. Electronic Arts spent millions of dollars annually on advertising. They certainly had the capacity to divert some of that budget to support adware.
“Very well.”
Hawkins began drafting his reply to ID Technology. Naturally, it was positive. He also added that he would like to see a working demo as soon as possible to understand exactly how it operated.
“Done!”
Yoo Jae-won, who had been sitting in front of the computer for hours finishing the final touches on Android Alpha, raised his arms in triumph. At the same time, he stretched fully, loosening his stiff shoulders and back. Though he wasn’t at an age where joints should seize up, they cracked loudly from prolonged tension. Fortunately, the compilation had finished successfully, and the adware feature had integrated cleanly into the Ribbon Interface. Since adware wasn’t a complicated concept, implementing the actual functionality hadn’t been particularly difficult either.
“Alright, let’s boot it up.”
He powered on the computer with Android Alpha installed. Because the hardware was simple, the POST finished in an instant, and the DOS files on the hard drive were read immediately. The Ribbon Interface screen appeared just as quickly. The display flickered a few times, then a tin-can robot with a CRT embedded in its chest began stacking bricks diligently—an animation indicating that essential system files were loading. As the loading progressed, the bricks formed the word “LOADING.”
Bam-bam~!
After a few seconds of loading, the desktop appeared, accompanied by a small fanfare—the startup signal. Then, in the bottom-right corner, alongside the ID Technology logo, an advertisement for ID Office popped up. Though only palm-sized, on the small monitor it occupied roughly a quarter of the screen. Thanks to VGA’s 640×480 resolution, even the small text was legible. However, because it was in 16-color mode, it lacked vibrancy. If the internet had been widespread, clicking the ad would have taken users to ID Office’s homepage or purchase page. But right now, it wasn’t clickable. Once storage capacity increased later, they could add functions to open documents containing purchase instructions or program descriptions, but the current alpha version had nothing beyond a basic notepad.
The ad image disappeared after about ten seconds.
“Perfect.”
Users could use Android Alpha for free by simply viewing one advertisement at every boot. The Ribbon Interface worked flawlessly, and users could click icons registered on the desktop to launch programs or play media files such as WAV, MID, IMS, or MOD. To support this, Android Alpha included sound card drivers and a media player Jae-won had created.
Jae-won clicked the shutdown button. The hard drive made its characteristic grinding sound, the desktop vanished, and a message appeared: “It is now safe to turn off your computer.” Since the motherboard lacked software-controlled power-off functionality, the user had to flip the switch manually.
After shutting down, Jae-won immediately powered the machine back on. The same sequence repeated, and booting began once more.
Bam-bam~!
The startup signal was identical. But one thing had changed—the advertisement image on the right was different. It now displayed the Electronic Arts logo. He had designed the system to cycle through multiple ads in sequence, and it was working exactly as intended. There was no slowdown when the ad appeared, nor did users have to sit idle. They could move the mouse or click the Start button to prepare to launch programs.
“I made it, but it really turned out well.”
Seeing the smoothly functioning Ribbon Interface filled Jae-won with satisfaction. However, Android Alpha was not a perfect operating system. Because it ran on top of DOS, it inherited all of DOS’s shortcomings. The most critical flaw was that if an application crashed due to its own error, the system could not return to the Ribbon Interface and would freeze. If he had followed the original plan of using a Unix kernel, terminating only the faulty program and returning to the OS would have been simple. But because it was DOS, there was no way to implement protection mechanisms for the operating system. Adding such protections would only cause conflicts with existing applications, rendering the protection meaningless.
“Hmm. The bootloader should only be included with ID Office.”
Including a bootloader in Android Alpha would defeat the purpose of taking market share from MS-DOS. On the other hand, ID Office was a program that could not afford any flaws, and some specialized corporate software even checked the exact DOS version, making the bootloader essential. Of course, most users would be satisfied as long as ID Office helped with their work regardless of the underlying OS, but Jae-won’s job was to accommodate even the minority of users.
“In that case, should we market Android Alpha as game-only and the version bundled with ID Office as professional?”
Android Alpha only needed to run games well. Even if errors occurred, the universal solution of rebooting existed. The business version only needed to run ID Office perfectly. Thinking about it, there were functional differences between the game-oriented Android Alpha and the one embedded in ID Office. The presence or absence of the adware feature was a major distinction, and crucially, the business version lacked multimedia capabilities. Since no company installed sound cards and speakers on work computers, he had removed them. This could actually become a marketing point for ID Office.
Distinguishing the two versions could be done simply by slightly altering the text in the Control Panel that appeared when the Start button was pressed.
“While we’re at it, should we also add a restriction preventing external programs from running on the professional version?”
Companies strongly disliked employees doing personal tasks during work hours. Playing games at work was even grounds for dismissal. Yet few employees refrained when they knew they could get away with it. Blocking it at the source would be something corporate executives would welcome with open arms.
“Games are best enjoyed at home, lounging comfortably with popcorn and cola.”
Jae-won casually made the decision to fundamentally eliminate the thrilling forbidden thrill of slacking off at work for office workers.
“Hmm, good.”
After completing the tests, Jae-won began creating the installation file for the game version of Android Alpha. Making it installable on a computer with no operating system and a freshly purchased hard drive required some technical finesse. It needed to boot from a floppy disk and include a hard drive formatting function. After that, system files and utilities had to be installed on the hard drive. Though slightly more complex than installing a regular application, it posed no problem for Jae-won.
Once finished, the game version of Android Alpha came to roughly 760KB—about half the capacity of a 2HD floppy disk. The remaining space was sufficient for storing advertisement images to be displayed via adware.
“It looks like we can fit up to about thirty ads.”
The advertisements were image files. Bitmap files that stored every pixel’s data would have taken up too much space, so he had drastically reduced the size through lossy compression. Each ad image only needed 20–30KB, so even packed tightly, thirty could fit. However, that would degrade image quality and slow down display speed, so around twenty was the appropriate number.
“I wonder how many ads will come in? Well, we’ll find out once we send it to Electronic Arts.”
After finishing the installation file, Jae-won connected to KETEL. The significantly faster ISDN modem was performing admirably. Screens flew by, and he soon connected to Electronic Arts’ FTP server. Using the special account created for him and ID Technology, he created a new directory called Android Alpha and began uploading. Thanks to the tremendous speed of 3KB per second, the progress bar climbed rapidly. The upload completed in just four and a half minutes.
“Technological progress is truly frightening.”
What would have taken hours with the old 2,400 bps modem was now finished in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee. If internet speeds in the United States increased further, they could easily become twice as fast as now. Work was underway to connect ID Technology’s Silicon Valley office, the Yeoju office, and Jae-won’s home with high-speed lines. Once the ISDN line application at the San Francisco AT&T sales office was processed and connected to the Silicon Valley office server, everything would be complete. In Korea, things would have moved swiftly and been finished long ago, but in the United States, no matter how many times he urged them, the only response was to wait. He couldn’t understand why installing a single modem took so long, but there was nothing to do but wait.
Instead, he had instructed his programmers to develop server and messenger programs optimized for high-speed networks. Originally, Jae-won had planned to handle that himself, but he had delegated it to the staff due to the development of Android Alpha and the bootloader.
“But why hasn’t Activision responded at all?”
The unanswered question was Activision, which had yet to reply. They were one of the two largest distributors in the American game industry, alongside Electronic Arts. He had sent a fax and made phone calls, but there was no response. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know ID Technology’s name. Perhaps their decision-making process was extremely slow, or they didn’t understand the adware concept, or in the worst case, they had made a negative judgment. Competition was necessary to drive up advertising rates, and losing Activision would be quite disappointing.