BattleMail.com

What it was

BattleMail.com was a dot-com-era British gaming startup, experimenting with multiplayer play over email, interactive TV and mobile at a point when broadband, online gaming and mobile gaming were all still in their infancy. In hindsight it reads as an early precursor to the asynchronous, social gaming that became commonplace 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.

The work

Co-founder and programmer. The role was predominantly C++ development across the games themselves — graphics, game mechanics, animation systems, audio and game data transport — taking titles from conception through to delivery, and building out the technical team as the games found an audience.

• 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 built to generate revenue for the content provider and the mobile operators alike, and was the first application to work on a revenue-sharing principle, with payment split between the participating operators, Siemens, Mobileway and BattleMail.com.

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.