In six years of writing about mobile games, I've only ever had one conversation with someone from RIM.

It didn't really involve mobile gaming.

For that reason, I didn't hold out much hope about the company's three-day BlackBerry DevCon, held last week in San Francisco, but as I was in the US thought it worth the risk.

No doubt, there would be talk about enterprise solutions, perhaps detail about the strategy for the Android Player for its PlayBook tablet, one of its co-CEOs would be bullish about hardware numbers...

And those things did occur, but what was significant was that they were minor elements in an otherwise fascinating event.

1. RIM's got game - at least, a head of games

Talking to Anders Jeppsson, it might seem his role as RIM's first head of games was a serendipitous affair.

The co-founder and CEO of Swedish game studio SouthEnd Interactive had been working as a consultant, developing Asian business opportunities for a telecoms outfit, before moving to user interface company The Astonishing Tribe to undertake a similar task.

RIM's acquisition of TaT late in 2010 derailed those plans, but gaining it Jeppsson as a bonus; something it and he have since made the most of.

Outcomes to-date include the acquisition of social mobile gaming platform Scoreloop, as well as deeper integration with middleware companies such as Unity and Marmalade, both of who were much in evidence at BlackBerry DevCon. Support from EA Mobile is also being maintained with more game releases planned.

Of course, one man - indeed, one man based in Sweden - doesn't solve the historic apathy of RIM and, by default, BlackBerry users to gaming. But, hopefully, combined with the ditching of Java and adoption of the newly-named native BBX platform for the company's future smartphones and tablets, it does demonstrates a new commitment.

This was underlined by new VP of developer relations Alec Saunders. Not a 'games guy', nevertheless he stated, "Games are a critical part of the market place"; not something we'd previously have expected a RIM executive to say.

2. The bigger picture

Of course, the herd of elephants in the room at any RIM event these days are problems as widespread as the recent email outage, demands from national governments over access to RIM's proprietary comms servers, plus a collapse in US market share, and serious shareholder disquiet over its financial performance.

To some extent, these can be over emphasised. As co-CEO Mike Lazaridis pointed out, over the past 12 months, the number of RIM subscribers has risen from 50 to 70 million, and the BlackBerry 7 launch was "its most successful ever".

Yet, in competition from both iOS and Android - not to mention a likely resurgent Nokia in Europe - the company could easily be squeezed into fourth place in the most lucrative device markets by the end of 2012; unthinkable a couple of years ago.

To some extent, the travails of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet are a cautionary guide. It's a great device - differentiated in terms of size, UI, video playback, some security features - but not in comparison to iPad where it really matters; price, battery life and ecosystem. And that's before you throw Amazon's $200 Kindle Fire into the competition.

Similarly, no matter how much RIM talks up its games strategy and spins the myth that BlackBerry App World is the "second most profitable app store after Apple", developers only really care about hardware volumes.

3. The social game changer

Yet, RIM does have at least one key advantage over every other mobile OEM: the BlackBerry Messenger service.

With over 50 million users, BBM is a massively popular social platform and one that's being quickly built on in terms of app functionality - 25 million BBM connected apps have been downloaded over the past couple of months, with music apps and Foursquare particularly prevalent.

In terms of making this easier for game developers to hook into, it's clear RIM is working hard to integrate BBM into the Scoreloop mobile gaming network, potentially creating an Xbox Live-style platform for BlackBerry gaming.

This will also include access to proprietary RIM services such as operator billing and advertising.

Some of this stickiness potential can already been seen in BBM connected games such as Magmic's Texas Hold 'Em King; the BlackBerry-only freemium game has been downloaded over a million times, with an average IAP transaction of $14, and 2 percent of purchasers spending the game's maximum of $399.99.

4. Android's red herring

Even since it was announced, it's been highly unclear how RIM's support for Android apps would be meaningful.

And listening to some of the technical limitations for content that will work on the initial version of the PlayBook Android Player, it seems much more a PR play than useful distribution channel.

Only supporting a subset of Android APIs (level 10) at launch, no Google libraries are supported (so no Google Maps), while camera support has also been heavily fudged.

RIM spokesmen might claim that '65 percent of Android Gingerbread apps will work without code changes', but the truth is that it's highly unlikely these will include any decent games.

5. The vision thing

Despite having spoken twice to Anders Jeppsson on the subject, I'm still not entirely convinced about the full implications of "the serialisation of game state".

The most obvious feature is being able to pass over a game to a friend to play or experience for you, taking viral distribution one step further. "Imagine being able to pass over a boss mission that you're stuck on to your friend to complete," Jeppsson said.

I can imagine that, but think there's much more to come from RIM and Scoreloop about this.

"We have a vision of a federation of devices, sharing data and content in future. As people have multiple devices, we're looking to that seamless transition between machines," Jeppsson added.

That's the bit I'm not so sure about yet.