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BattleMail.com

ProjectFeb 2000 - Feb 2002
A montage of the BattleMail games Soccer, Kung Fu and Joust, alongside five BattleMail characters who appeared in the games.
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  • Game Development
  • Multiplayer Games
  • Interactive TV
  • Mobile
  • C / C++
  • GCC
  • Visual BASIC
  • Win32

What it was

BattleMail.com was a British gaming startup from the dot-com era. It tried out multiplayer games over email, interactive TV and mobile at a time when broadband, online gaming and mobile gaming were all still in their early days. Looking back, it was an early taste of the asynchronous, social gaming that became common years later.

Alongside the debut title the company produced games such as Soccer, Joust and Turkey DeathMatch, built SMS and mobile versions, and developed an in-flight entertainment version of Kung Fu for Virgin Atlantic Airways.

In-game screenshots of BattleMail Soccer, with players engaged in a penalty shootout.
BattleMail Soccer.
In-game screenshots of BattleMail Joust (the menu, pre-fight and fight screens), alongside a fight in BattleMail Turkey DeathMatch.
BattleMail Joust and BattleMail Turkey DeathMatch.

The work

I was a co-founder and programmer. Most of my work was C++ development on the games themselves, covering graphics, game mechanics, animation systems, audio and sending game data back and forth, and taking titles from first idea to release. As the games found an audience, I also helped build up the technical team.

  • Design and development of gaming systems and technology from the ground up.
  • Research into new and emerging web and mobile technologies, and how they could be turned into games people actually wanted to play.
  • Development of client/server architectures to manage and process game data.
  • Supporting colleagues with documentation for promotion and advertising.

Kung Fu

The first game spread virally and passed a million users inside six months. That success led to a contract with Virgin Atlantic to port Kung Fu to the seat-back screens in their in-flight entertainment system.

In December 2001 a mobile version launched on the Siemens C45 handset, letting players challenge each other to virtual fights over SMS. It was designed to make money for both the content provider and the mobile operators, and was the first application to use revenue sharing, with payments split between the participating operators, Siemens, Mobileway and BattleMail.com.

In-game screenshots of BattleMail Kung Fu running on Windows, and a version running on a Siemens C45 mobile phone.
BattleMail Kung Fu, the first title and the one that reached a million users.

BAFTA nomination

BattleMail Kung Fu was nominated for a BAFTA in 2001, in the mobile and games category.

This role also appears on the career timeline.

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