One of the dedicated gaming talks at BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012 was headlined by Anders Jeppsson, RIM's head of games.
Entitled 'Game Makers Dream: The BlackBerry native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS', it provided a high level overview of where the company is going.
"We've been working hard behind the scenes, asking questions like 'What sort of tooling should we be offering to game developers to make development and monetisation easier?' Jeppsson said.
"Developers want to focus on what adds end user value."
Firm foundations
Kicking into detail on the native SDK for PlayBook, Sean Paul Taylor, RIM's team lead for gaming R&D said, "We focus on open standards like POSIX, C++, Sockets, OpenGL ES 1.1/2. and OpenAL 1.1," adding, "We've really been pushing that," with respect to the audio standard.
RIM is has also ported a lot of open source engines to PlayBook, including Boost, Box2D, Bullet physics, Lua and cocos2d-x.
It's even working on gameplay, its own 3D game framework.
"We're trying to make it a non-RIM gaming framework for anyone to use - it's not really an engine," Taylor said of the technology, which is designed to highlight ground up cross-platform C++ development.
In the game
As part of the initiative, RIM's internal game group has been making small prototypes, including a simple spaceship game, a particle effect demo using a fire-eating dragon and a twin-stick shooter, which may become a fully fledged game.
"We call it creating an itch for developer to build on," Taylor explained, mixing up his metaphors somewhat by adding, "We're eating our own dog food, so we know we're provided the right tools."
You can find out more about making games for Blackberry at blackberry.com/gamedeveloper
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
News
Feb 7th, 2012
BB DevCon 2012: Thorsten Heins on RIM's commitment to developers and BlackBerry's vibrant platform
Data & Research
Jul 6th, 2020
37% of iPhone owners game daily while 46% of Blackberry owners have no games
Top Stories
News
6 hours, 44 minutes ago
PocketGamer.biz Podcast Week in Views E10 - Brawl Stars smashes 2023 revenue, Square Enix’s extraordinary losses, and Haaland signs for Clash of Clans
News
May 3rd, 2024
Week in Views - Apple back themselves bigstyle, Clash bags Haaland and dreams come true at King
News
May 3rd, 2024
Week in Views - Apple back themselves bigstyle, Clash bags Haaland and dreams come true at King
News
May 3rd, 2024
Mobile Movers: All the latest appointments and job moves from around the industry
Events
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
LA Games Conference 2024 | North America | May 6th |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Valencia Indie Summit 2024 | Europe | May 16th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
WN Conference Istanbul 2024 | Jun 11th | |
DevGAMM Vilnius 2024 | Europe | Jun 14th |