Jagex on RuneScape, MechScape and FunOrb Interview

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Eurogamer: Does MechScape resemble any other games out there so we can get a better picture of what it will be like?

Henrique Olifiers: We went to great lengths to make sure that wasn't the case! Ha ha!

Eurogamer: I suppose one of the benefits of making piles of money from RuneScape is that you can afford to take risks. How many more resources are you pouring into MechScape compared with what went into RuneScape?

Mark Gerhard: Tens of millions. But the same into FunOrb. Whether you're aware of it or not, [FunOrb was] probably in development for two, three years before we even launched - so three-and-a-half years total. And that's assumed tens of millions of pounds of investment.

But each product has its own self-contained studio spread across two buildings. That means you're investing a lot into it. But we can.

We have every expectation that [MechScape] is going to be a success, because we're gamers and this is the type of game we want to play. But if it's not [a success], that's not going to stop us doing another great project, or another great project, because that's what we do - that's what gets us out of bed in the morning.

Henrique Olifiers: We have the comfort of working on our own time. It's not ready; don't launch - put it back in development until we feel, "OK now it's good, let's launch it." Instead of rushing it or having to put it to deadlines. We have the luxury of doing it right, in our own time.

Eurogamer: That must be liberating.

Henrique Olifiers: Yes [smiles].

Eurogamer: What sort of time-line are we looking at in terms of beta and release?

Henrique Olifiers: We are polishing the game now.

Eurogamer: So is there any date for a beta?

Henrique Olifiers: No, no no. We constantly playtest the game, invite people to help and run focus tests to find out what they like so we can adjust. By the time we feel it's ready to go we're suddenly going to open it and avoid the pitfalls we see so many other MMOs going through by releasing a product they can only get right a year afterwards.

Eurogamer: Would you ever consider ditching Java and doing a proper AAA title?

Mark Gerhard: We don't have the dependencies on Java that I suppose others do because there's very little bar the language and the Java virtual machine that we actually use. Everything else has been built by Jagex. Other developers that are using Java may have genuine tech barriers preventing them doing a more high quality experience. But we solved that years ago.

Not only do we run our own web servers in-house, but [we do] everything from language and model editors to animators and mesh editors. Everything has been built in-house by our own team in our own The only thing we still use that's industry standard is a Unix system our servers run on. Everything else on top is Jagex built. That has solved a lot of problems for us and allowed us to do cool things, as you'll see when MechScape comes out.

We would argue that just because it's in a browser doesn't mean it can't be triple-A. It's by no means trivial to get a game working in a browser, and it's taken us nine years to just know what we know today. And we're still learning. It's just a learning curve that people have to go through and maybe that's why, by comparison, the quality of games out there is not analogous to RuneScape or FunOrb or MechScape.

We'll never go away from the browser model. We, in many respects, pioneered the space. We certainly believe this is the future, and we know by talking to our friends at EA or Activision or anywhere else that this is where they want to be, but they struggle to get there. And that is comforting. But we make sure we remain a moving target, moving forward, so it's tough to catch up.

Make no mistake, we can up the polygons in MechScape dramatically and have parity with any kind of game that's out at the moment. The problem is, that would remove or reduce the accessibility. We still say we want the same experience, but we don't accept the cost in terms of space and bandwidth and everything else. And we had to build the solution to that ourselves.

What we're also doing is making sure we're platform agnostic.

Eurogamer: What about the new Google OS?

Mark Gerhard: Yes, and that's very exciting. We're tracking that, and we're making sure we're one of the first to be there if not the first.

We built a translation tool - a parsing tool, rather, that parses out proprietary code to Wii, to the Xbox 360. So we have the capability to be on all three, but it's now a question of which product, which device? Equally, do we do that or do we go into China? So we've made sure we have the support for that.

For us, triple-A - a console game with the type of polygons you would expect - is very much in our reach. Is that high priority? Should we do a third MMO? Should we put our current MMOs on different platforms? Should we pilot one of our FunOrb games? Should we focus on mobile phones instead? Those are the kind of questions we're asking ourselves. We've certainly got capability in all those areas.

Eurogamer: Is it naïve for companies to focus on making blockbusters before they have a proven track record?

Mark Gerhard: It all depends on what your definition of blockbusters is. To me, the general definition is a triple-A game has got to have more money spent on in and marketing than any other game. Some of those succeed as a result, but I think it's the 80:20 rule, where 80 of them fail, because they aren't exciting; they're old games repainted.

There's a school of thought that says if you copy something that's successful somewhere else, you'll be able to duplicate that. I would disagree and say, "By copying you have already devalued your product and your potential reach of market." If it's not inventive there's no reason to tell a friend to check it out. It might be more gory or have slightly better graphics, but there's got to be something else to add to it.

Is it dangerous to just kind of try and just create a triple-A? The perception is to take something that works and re-paint it, re-theme it as something else, get it out there. As long as you spend a lot of money on it, it will be a success. I think that's the most dangerous strategy of all.

Henrique Olifiers: MMO development is exponentially more complex than single-player. That's why so many people fail. Right now there are 250 [MMOs] in development around the world, and if a dozen of those actually break even when they're launched, it will be amazing. Most of them are going to fail.

There is some truth to the statement that people are naïve, because they're going after things they don't fully understand. In that sense it makes sense to start small and build up. If we started Jagex today and set out to create a triple-A MMO we would fail. We succeed because we have failed before, several times in small scale. We learned from those mistakes.