It's a dirty job but someone has to do it. And so it was that someone ended up in New York for Glu Mobile's Gamer Day. We're already working our way through previewing some of the games we saw on our sister site Pocket Gamer – you can check out The Dark Knight, for example.

But as well as playing the publisher's upcoming autumn releases, we also took the time to chat more generally about the way the company does business; notably with respect to its various licensing partners.

"Because of our long-term relationship with them, one of the best things about the way we work with Warner Bros is we can set up conversations really early and get the most out of our games," explains Justin Kubiak, Glu's vice president of marketing for North America.

"Of course, sometimes there is sensitivity in terms of the context and timing but generally they are really good about making sure we can get early access. For example, I read the script to The Dark Knight film about a year ago so we knew everything that was going to happen. We got assets and artwork, too, so we could work on a consistent visual style."

This working relationship means that the Glu team gets a view into Warners' roadmap of future projects; currently this stretches out until the 2010 mark.

The company has other licensing deals with different studios and Kubiak says early access is always key.

"If things aren't working out the way we think they should be, the process we end up imposing is always an early look at the script and access to the style guides," he explains. "For example, we're currently working with Dreamworks on Madagascar 2, which is due at the end of the year, and we collaborated really early on that one."

Another long-term licensing deal that is working out for the company is its hook-up with casual gaming publisher PlayFirst.

Its Diner Dash games have been very successful on mobile and so now Glu is branching out, bringing PlayFirst's Wedding Dash game to mobile, for instance. "We've launched it in the US already and it's done very well," Kubiak explains. "It's the next level of the Dash series, and we'll be putting out more titles like this."

As for whether Glu could ever take the lead and create an original mobile version of a Dash-style game, for example, which would then flow back into the casual web market, he says there's nothing currently planned, but never say never.

"It's certainly possible that down the road we could say, 'We want to do a mobile-specific Dash game, a Touch Dash game' – I've just totally made that up – but at the moment we don't have any plans to do that," muses Kubiak.

But there's certainly plenty of choice still available, as he points out: "There are a bunch of Dash games that have been released online that we haven't yet done on mobile because we can't put out the same volume so there's plenty of existing content for us to pick from. And we know there will be more themes coming from PlayFirst, so whatever we do, we're going to be selective about what we pick."