For those of you that don’t live in Europe or follow the professional poker scene closely, the name “Pokermillion” might not mean a lot. But if you do carry a red passport (or a deck of cards in your pocket at all times) you probably know about the UK’s biggest poker tournament and the TV event that shares its name. When British publisher Player One approached us about creating the next title in the mobile Pokermillion series, they wanted to move away from the standard “just like on TV!” design. If it were up to us, we said, we’d add lesser known poker varieties to the tried and true Texas Hold ’Em, we’d fine-tune their engine and add new personality profiles to create a deep AI opponent pool, and – most importantly – we’d center the whole experience on a rich and surprising narrative with graphic-novel-inspired visual design and a retro spy music score. Luckily for us, they liked the sound of that.

When we started production on Pokermillion 2009: The Bluff, we knew we would be working with a veteran Hollywood screenwriter on the storyline...but we didn’t want to create an experience that was simply a moving graphic novel with poker interludes – even one with a great narrative. That’s what led us to develop perhaps our favorite feature of the game: the Playstyle Assessment Story System. What PASS does is create a profile of the player by continuously monitoring user poker decisions in more than a dozen categories and using that data to drive on-the-fly storyline changes. In Pokermillion 2009, if a player is timid at the poker table, she might find herself on the wrong end of a renegade General’s accusation of cowardice. Using new technology to add innovative design elements to game types that are starting to feel long in the tooth? Yeah - that’s why we love our jobs.

Ben 10: All Out Attack , our first collaboration with the Cartoon Network, will be appearing on decks this fall just as the new season of Ben 10: Alien Force hits the airwaves on the Cartoon Network. In All Out Attack, gamers take control of Ben Tennyson, 10-year-old boy and proud owner of the Omnitrix, an alien artifact that allows him to transform into any of ten extraterrestrial warriors with superheroic powers. Designed in the classic top down shooter style, All Out Attack features 10 playable characters, 16 unique levels in 4 totally different landscapes, dozens of dangerous enemies, and an innovative control system that allows gamers to control all this action with just one thumb.

Of course, its one handed playability and bite-sized play sessions aren’t the only aspects of Ben 10: All Out Attack designed with the mobile platform’s nuances firmly in mind. The game also takes full advantage of our proprietary graphics engine and the development toolchain we’ve created to support it. Using engineSP™, we’ve managed to pack even more characters, animations, and settings into Ben 10 than we featured in Hip Hop Immortals...all while decreasing total download size. And since our level editing suite allows designers to access a much lower level of functionality than usual, we were able to pack a huge amount of extras into All Out Attack, including our Xbox-Live-style Trophy System. Yep, making games can be as much fun as playing them.

Hip Hop Immortals was our first wide-release title, rolling out on Boost Mobile in the spring of 2007 and, after a six-month exclusivity period, debuting on other carrier decks during the summer of 2007. The game follows wanna-be Hip Hop star Neso from his early days of rapping on street corners in the 1970s through his rise to fame in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. Targeted squarely at Boost’s core userbase of Hip Hop fans, the game combines quick, addictive gameplay with unprecedented authenticity. Three of Hip Hop culture’s core components (freestyle rapping, breaking, and writing graffiti) are playable in-game, each with a unique mechanic. Word puzzle, rhythm-action, and arcade styles provide gameplay variety while maintaining a pace and ease of use carefully tailored to the mobile platform.

Hip Hop Immortals also implements some of the new technology we’ve been working on behind the scenes at Massively Mobile. Our Network Asset Storage engine got its first road test with this title and it performed beautifully. As a gamer, you won’t even know it’s there...unless you’re wondering how we managed to cram all those graphics, music and song lyrics into HHI’s tiny download. We also implemented an open-ended expansion management system that allows us to transparently roll out content updates in-game without forcing players to download a new JAD. Even with a single-player title like Hip Hop Immortals, there are still opportunities to take advantage of the mobile platform’s unique possibilities through both design and technology, and that’s precisely the kind of thing we love to do.