Over the past couple of days, we've been running interviews with RIM's director of developer relations Mike Kirkup concerning the various announcements the company made during the BlackBerry Developer Conference 2009.

The final piece in the series is specifically about gaming: where it fits in the BlackBerry world, where the opportunities are, and what RIM is doing to encourage more developers to get involved.

Pocket Gamer: What's your view about the gaming potential of BlackBerry owners?

Mike Kirkup: Until recently, the traditional BlackBerry owner might have had a small number of minutes of downtime to play games. They aren't the PSP or the DS generation who are looking for 30 minutes chunks of gaming. Certainly, on the corporate side, no one who uses a BlackBerry has 30 minutes to play games, that's why the majority of games have been based on this premise and been more along the lines of casual or puzzle games.

However, new BlackBerry users, who have bought the device over the past 12 months, want a different experience and want enhanced graphics. That's what's driving our introduction of OpenGL ES for example.

Are we now looking to compete with Sony? No. But we're trying to round out the platform in terms of what players want, and the new Need for Speed Undercover game from EA is a great example of that.

Games have always been a large category on the App World.

Absolutely. Partly I think that's because a lot of companies port games to BlackBerry to see what sells. We're looking to encourage developers to build custom games for BlackBerry.

This was something we saw with our Developer Challenge held over the summer. There were 16 applications and the runner up was Fierce Towers, from Nickle Buddy.

That company's entire focus is building games specifically for BlackBerry and what was great about the game is it has a quality and a stickiness because it was specifically developed for BlackBerry rather than a port. I think the audience is increasingly going to expect this from BlackBerry games in future.

Why do you think BlackBerry is a good opportunity for developers?

On a lot of the other mobile platforms, developers aren't rewarded for effort. Just because you spend twice as much time on your application doesn't mean you can charge double for it. I think effort is rewarded on BlackBerry.

At the moment, we have a lot of developers making a lot of games but a lot of these are ports, which as I've previously said is something that I think will be less attractive to our audience in future.

How do you think BlackBerry's announcements will affect game developers in terms of the games they can make?

One area we haven't seen much of on BlackBerry yet is location-based games. I think it's an opportunity both in terms of people wanting to play locally with their friends, as well as the novelty value of getting out the house and playing a game. Sure it's a niche but it's a niche that should be significantly more profitable than mass market gaming.

It also starts to get interesting when you have the option of in-app purchases, because to date, it's been very difficult to monetise such games. Payment is the final piece of puzzle in terms of enabling developers to set up scenarios where friends go out and have a treasure hunt in their neighbourhood, for example.

Finally, you have the big publishers releasing for BlackBerry and plenty of little guys. What about the mid-range developers and publishers?

It's true we have the likes of EA and Gameloft, and then there's a lot of the little up-and-coming companies. What we're trying to do is build those guys into the mid-range and then create an opportunity for the bedroom guys, who are using GUI tools and the like to make games.

In general though, I'm optimistic about the future of games on BlackBerry because we are one of the few places where developers can charge a premium for their games.

Thanks to Mike for his time

You can find out more from the BlackBerry developers website or check out the games on the App World here.