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Jagex the makers of Runescape reveal a new game!
http://www.developmag.com/news/30000/Runescape-developer-Jagex-working-on-new-MMO
Runescape developer Jagex working on new MMO
Michael French Today, 1:08pm
But CEO says that infrastructure, not IP, is secret to the firm’s success
Runescape developer Jagex has revealed it is working on a brand new MMO due for launch in March 2009.
The unnamed MMO was revealed by CEO Geoff Iddison during a panel discussion at today’s GameHorizon Conference in Newcastle.
Dubbed ‘Nextscape’ by Iddison, the game was said to incorporate – as Runescape does – a variety of business and subscription models to drive consumer engagement, he said.
However, although the company has run its successful Runescape MMO since 2001 – offering biweekly content updates - with the new property due to join it early next year, Iddison said that Jagex’ real value isn’t its IP, but its infrastructure.
“We’ve got an infrastructure behind Runescape which is the real silver of the Jagex, the value of the company,” said Iddison. “It’s not the game, the game is going to come and go,” he said.
“The infrastructure is the thing that can scale. Runescape has 10 years of good growth – but the infrastructure is infinitely scalable,” he added of Jagex’ vast operation of servers and online support teams.
Although Jagex employs 400 people at its Cambridge, UK HQ, only 25 per cent are dedicated to development. Half the staff are focused on content and support while the rest are dedicated to that infrastructure.
“All the emerging markets, mobile games and payment systems are a driver bhind Jagex,” he added when discussing how the infrastructure takes advantage of emergent industry trends in the online space to drive company growth.
“Once you’ve got that infrastructure ticking its amazing what you can get on it.”
It’s possible that Jagex’ next offering will look to target a wider consumer base/ Although a big force in the more casual end of the MMO market, Runescape’s fantasy world has mostly male players ages eight to 18 which are getting younger as time goes on, admitted Iddison, saying the firm’s strategy currently excluded female players but that “we’ve got some plans there” to redress the imbalance.
Comments
Cool, I could see them publicly announcing it around this time and no doubt its MechScape.
?
yea we have been talking about Mechscape for years, though I strongly detest Mech games
.. maybe it is because I am a girl. lol.
Old news
Well not really it was the first time they publicly announced it but yes we have known about it for a long time.
?
No its because deep down inside you know its going to fail, just like funorb.
That depends, Fun Orb is nothing compared to RuneScape, it is ment to be something like a portal for small games, not for the people interested in the long term evolution in a certain game.
FunOrb is supposed to be a copy of miniclip or any other websites that offer such small games.
What do you mean “depends”? what does it depend on in your point of view? when free gaming portals have much more and better content then a semi p2p gaming portal its safe to assume that the semi p2p gaming portal is a complete failure.
Yeah! this game is probably gonna fail like funorb (well runescape too) but i hope not
i hope that jagex learned from all the mistakes they have made in runescape 
Playing: WoW, Eve online, guild wars
Played: Everquest, runescape, archlord,lineage, lotro
Waiting for: Aion
Let's just see how this ends up. I used to play ANARCHY before, and it was a good sci-fi MMORPG, but I lost my interest to it once I saw the fantasy mmorpgs.
Honestly, throwing away RS for MechScape was a bad idea, and because of that, I think MechScape won't be much better.
I can't wait until they prove themselves wrong. I think these statements give some interesting insight into how Jagex feels about its game, and their reasoning behind a lot of the recent updates. The infrastructure certainly helps the game, but it doesn't MAKE the game, and I think that's an important distinction they often forget. If the game itself isn't fun, it doesn't matter what leveling system you use or how players can trade, or whether they can change servers at will.
Runescape is garbage, easily the worst MMO I have ever played.......
It wasn’t always garbage and world of warcraft is the worst mmo I have ever played.
Well it might be true that their numbers are not gowing up, but that doesn't mean they gave up on RS for Mechscape. We will probably be presented with a product that will evolve on some strict ideas, which compared to RuneScape where everything started from a random project and developed forward as time went by with no real goal at the end, and modifying (removing) some of the game mechanics they now considered harmfull.
I think MechScape will be developed in a good way that won't allow the game mechanics to change over time as it happened in RuneScape.
That’s not going to happen, everything jagex makes sucks unless it’s a rip off of another idea or a mistake like runescape, the only reason runescape was fun is because Andrew gower didn’t have the knowledge to correct certain things at the time.
That’s not going to happen, everything jagex makes sucks unless it’s a rip off of another idea or a mistake like runescape, the only reason runescape was fun is because Andrew gower didn’t have the knowledge to correct certain things at the time.
Or, he actually had some creativity and common sense left him him.
no trading, no pking/loot