After bravely stating that Trip Hawkins would be our last interview in the That was the year that was series, out comes a bonus feature.

In which case, we now say we've previously taken the opinions of 23 of the mobile gaming industry's brightest and best and to finish off the series, here's Clive Downie, veep of marketing at ngmoco.

One of the key iPhone companies of 2009, ngmoco released some of the highest quality games in the forms of Hand Circus' Rolando 2 and Rough Cookie's Star Defense, before diving into the brave new world of freemium games with Eliminate Pro and Touch Pet Dogs.

Pocket Gamer: What was the most significant event for ngmoco in 2009?

Clive Downie: Launching Eliminate and Touch Pets Dogs was a critical milestone. These launches were significant successes, both went to #1 and Eliminate hit the top 10 in the Top Grossing chart.

With these games, we reshaped our approach into one of providing service-orientated games that attract large numbers of players over a sustained period. We are now evolving our company and game development structures around this approach. At ngmoco, the shift in our business model has impacted how we view everything from marketing, to customer support, to live teams, to production, to operations and beyond.

What was your favourite mobile game of 2009?

I have so many. It's hard to pick one.

Charadium: multiplayer pictionary meets charades. Social creativity with a comfortable level of competition. My drawings are terrible but I can still win.

Dragons Lair: I'm a coin-op kid. Even though I enabled many arcade owners in the SW of England to retire early through my prolific spending of cash on Dragon's Lair I still couldn't resist this faithful conversion.

Eliminate Pro: Biased I know. But come on, it's frantic death-match action in nice and tight arenas over 3G or Wi-Fi. For free.

What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2010?

Looking into the near future I expect social gaming to start to truly be social, complete with social competition, social sharing and social co-operation - no longer simply meaning the ability for a game to deliver social spam.

We'll also see the evolution of smartphones and new app markets plus mobile gaming will begin to take more share of all demographics' entertainment time. We are moving from marginal to mainstream.

Google's play into mobile will make the landscape ever more interesting too. Competition's good for everyone.

Finally, mobile advertising is evolving in a meaningful way. We'll see clever advertising, with additive messaging woven into free-to-play games. These adverts will add value to the viewers' entertainment choices and won't merely be ad wallpaper.

If you could enforce one New Year's resolution, what would it be?

Don't stand still and don't get cocky.

Thanks to Clive for his time.

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