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Evolved Media developed a set of technical documentation for Massive Incorporated, which offers an Application Programming Interface (API) for serving context-sensitive advertising into video games over the Internet. The result is a set of documentation aimed at game developers that is content-rich and almost as much fun as the games themselves.

The Project

Massive Incorporated, now a division of Microsoft Corporation, engaged Evolved Media to create documentation of their API for inserting advertising into video games. Massive Incorporated runs a world-wide video game advertising network that has a wide reach but also enables advertising to be precisely targeted. To present advertising in video games, the publisher of the game must use an API that allows advertising that was created for the game to be loaded and inserted in the game during on-line play, usually in multi-player mode. The API allows the game developer to download ads, refresh them during play, and report on how many times they were viewed.

Evolved Media's Role

Evolved Media created the documentation use the Communication by Design™ process under which Evolved Media editor-analysts and writers interviewed technologists at Massive. This approach dramatically reduced the amount of time that was required of Massive engineers.

One of the key principles of successful API documentation used in this project is to first explain the context and then explain the API calls. This structure allows the developer to quickly understand the task at hand and then see how the API helps perform it. In the first section of the document, Evolved Media used a series of highly condensed information graphics to quickly explain the context.

The Result

By using Evolved Media, Massive avoided the long delays and the diversion of valuable engineers from development activities that are usually associated to create the API documentation. The API documentation was used by Massive to accelerate the adoption of its game network by video game publishers.

Evolved Media delivered:

• A business tutorial, which concisely describes the steps involved in integrate a game with the Massive network
• A creative integration manual, which takes game developers step-by-step through the process of integrating with the Massive network
• A developer's manual that describes application calls