Jagex Games Studio

It seems as if Jagex is shutting down their transformer's universe game ( http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-12-16-jagex-shutting-down-transformers-universe ) after making considerable investment in it this year ( http://www.insidermedia.com/insider...et-online-games-giant-turns-focus-investment/ ).

I decided to take a look at their corporate game portfolio: http://www.jagex.com/careers/games

The games that are listed include Transformers Universe (now closed), War of Legends (dead activity wise like FunOrb), and Runescape. It's also not surprising they're not hiring and the CEO is leaving. It seems as if a better name would be Jagex Game Studio.

The bottom line is that Jagex has had only one success during their 14 year existence... Runescape. Yet that game is barely surviving by maintaining half of its player base through 2007. It's fair to say 2007 will end up like Runescape classic soon.

If you were Jagex, what would you do? Clearly they're not much of an innovative company but it seems like that's what they need. After reviewing the company's financial statements, as much as I could, I don't see them remaining solvent or turning into a shadow of their current self soon.

 

backtracking all the shitupdates after eoc.

pre-eoc might be shit of raggers(as of pking), but eoc utterly killed the game, making 90% of skills and items useless.

 

Wow. First Mechscape, then Stellar Dawn, then Transformers.

 

Oh I forgot about those. And someone linked me to their newest investment (released December 11th) Block N Load: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRo98CofKg0

It looks horrendous.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but has Jagex ever had a successful release? Their money pile is decreasing from RS and isn't coming from anywhere else.

 

They're staffed by some of the most incompetent morons around, this shouldn't come as a surprise. They have no idea how to market new releases, and their idea of concept design is also terrible. Interesting numbers, though.

They need to focus on RuneScape and RuneScape alone if they intend to keep and promote a successful game.

 

Lmao yeah. The funny thing is they take this shit out on us by raising membership prices and continually adding worse and worse microtransactions. I mean they're fucking selling gold at the moment.

They always ignore the community and do whatever they feel like. They don't have any real customer support like most games do. The game itself technologically has lagged far behind while they force unpopular "improvements" down everyone throats like an ability system a fucking monkey could have written.

They've turned on the core design philosophies and the game will eventually stop being profitable, maybe that's what they need to turn shit around.

 

Last year they did pretty well..They profited £77 million ( 2012-2013 ), they got greedy and tried to transform Runescape into a game that looks like WoW to bring in more customers, however that ruined the game..Maybe they will just continue working on old school until it becomes like it was in 2011? That would keep me around for a little longer..But if they actually raise the membership fees to $15 a month I'm done lol (someone on Sythe said it would go up to that price)

 

There's one thing I've noticed throughout all my conversations with their staff (I'm friends with a couple of content devs, ninja team members and community team members) and it's that they all refer to one thing as a reason for why they didn't do something. Time.

The people in charge of how much time is allocated to each project is the lower management (Aka Mod Mark for content). I can't see him being too bad given the fact he's probably been at Jagex for longer than most of us have played, so the blame shifts onto those above him constantly pressuring him for content all the time.

I have no doubt that their developers are very talented, they just aren't given enough free-roam to finish the updates so they end up feeling half-assed. Take the EoC as a prime example of that - Although I don't mind playing it a lot of people hate it, and if not for the Revolution update I'd still be using momentum.

 

I'm afraid that it's too late for Jagex. There's no hope for their near future. Their only successful game will be Runescape. And when I say successful, I mean that it's semi active and bringing in money. They turned into a cash cow in Runescape, offering so many micros. It's really sad to see...

I watch a few minutes of their streams on Twitch sometimes, and a couple of days ago I'm watching Mod Mark K, I think that's his name, trying to discuss the current game, and the future of it, and he literally doesn't know anything about the game. I don't know man, Runescape is like a train wreck. It's horrible and all, but you can't seem to look away.

 

I disagree with you where you said there's no hope for Jagex's future. There will always be people playing RuneScape, no matter how terrible the updates get. People (including me) always come crawling back and getting sucked back in to the world of RuneScape and Jagex will be right there, taking our money again and again.

I do believe Jagex really should just stick to RuneScape though. I remember when they first created "FunOrb" or whatever it's called, and jeez, almost all of those games were terrible, and badly designed.. Do they even support it anymore?

 

You're very right, I meant their NEAR future, the next year or so, I don't see any booming success in these other projects that they're throwing money into. But, like you said, Runescape will be around, it would be very hard for it to just die out completely. In all honesty, I can see them opening multiple servers in the future, with gameplay that could cater to everyone. There's the RSC servers, although they don't get any attention whatsoever, the "2007" server, which is doing fairly well, and the Rs3 server, which will continue to get much updates and growth.

Now, what if they took the time to add additional servers?

"Pre EoC" 2010-EoC style gameplay
"Rs2" 2004-2006 style gameplay
"Bh Era" 2006-2009 gameplay - without that silly free trade stuff.

All of these with corresponding graphics and models, and so on.

This would take a fair amount of work by them and a lot of dedication, but I don't see why it couldn't be possible.

Will they ever get wind of this idea? Probably not.
Would they care enough to actually work on it? Probably not.

 

Jagex did say they had big changes and ideas in store for us in 2015 somewhere. I remember reading it. And about them opening multiple servers up, maybe they'll look in to classic sometime, who knows. I really do think Jagex has good intentions, and want to get back on track, they just fail to execute them properly.

 

They have said that the next year will be amazing etc every year since I started playing a decade ago. So far, they've yet to produce a year better than the previous yet (except the return of free trade/07).

 

It's because they're just riding off the success of RuneScape from back in the day, and now that people are wanting more they have to create something new and their minds are just blank.

 

That's just the thing - people aren't wanting more, they want Jagex to stop changing the game they already invested thousands of hours in. That's why both Jagex's biggest successes over the past 5 years were undoing things from the past (Free trade return, 07 game).

 

Let's not forget the current CEO Mark Gerhard was a complete asshole who got rid of gambling and introduced Spins in to the game and ofcourse introduced EOC, that's when Andrew Gower (original creator of runescape) decided to sell all his shares and be completely uninvolved with the game he created. With Mark Gerhard leaving and Jagex back paddling as fast as they can will help keep the game running for some time. That's my 2 cents for ya

 

It would be interesting if gambling returned. I genuinely don't see the issue with it -we're not puritans. Jagex should be a HBS case about how to not run a company.

 

Revert all the changes since 2012, lol.

They've made a lot of bad decisions IMO. The graphics are terrible (the old ones were better) because whoever's doing the graphics now is focusing on a cartoony look, they've made the game buyable in spins and coins and they've divided the community by pushing updates to try and keep up with other non-browser games it has no chances keeping up with.

RuneScape had it's niche, it had basic graphics and was basic to play. A new player to the game is going to be mindfucked about what everything is seeing as there's not only a million items but also custom overrides, retro custom overrides, seasonal overrides, Rs3, RS classic, Rs 2007, and so on. They make bad decisions then update to cover their asses by introducing old things back to the game. They just can't make a good decision and stick with it. Not to mention they made a load of Youtube 'kids' JMods and they're not doing them any favours IMO.

 

I just want to touch on that. I do agree. Here's the reason that I've made out of it. It's publicity for the most part. If they think "Well, everybody is starting to hate us again, hey, Chris Archie has hundreds of thousands of fans, let's reach out to him, everybody loves him!"

I use Chris Archie randomly here, but obviously that's one of the people you referred to. I like Chris, I loved his old "Top 10" series, but I don't see why he's employed at Jagex. I don't know, man.

 

They changed ownership and the new company is intentionally gutting them for shortterm profit. It's like cutting open the golden goose to get one egg right away but like, not really a golden goose cuz RS wasn't ever a monumental success. It's like a goose that used to lay gold eggs but then became silver, now bronze and new leadership pumped it full of a bunch of hormones so it looks super weird and they'll get 1 gold egg out of it now and that's it.

I like your point about the HBS case example, I think this really would be a good case. This solomon crap, raising membership prices, selling gold themselves, allowing players to pay for unbans and ownership of other inactive players' accounts, outsourcing the customer support, they're all moves to get short-term profit but will ultimately kill the company quickly