Is Runescape Run By Gamers or Businessmen?
Personally I sometimes think Jagex is run by a bunch of gamers/developers that managed to make a popular game and now find themselves in a business management situation rather than a game development situation, which I think leads them to making some potentially good decisions from a gaming perspective but extremely questionable decisions from a business perspective and their recent statements about Runescape fan sites and the advertising on them is reflection of this.
It’s obvious that Runescape definitely has the right to be considered a MASSIVE Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), it boasts over a million subscribers and no doubt has many millions more on free to play servers, but with this growth requires strategic leadership and I’m not sure those at Jagex steering the ships necessarily have shown they are indeed steering the game in the right direction from a business perspective.
Now everyone knows how quickly things change on the internet, it can take literally 12 months for a massive online entity to be reduced to a fraction of its former glory. So what is Jagex doing to entrench itself in the MMORPG market or to defend it position? I can’t help but feel if a new worthy competitor was to enter to the free browser based MMORPG industry Jagex might find themselves in a very hostile environment with a significant percentage of their user base vanishing in a few short weeks/months.
So I guess the question I sometimes wonder is, are all Jagex’s eggs all in one basket? What leverage do they have to retain current users, or alternatively what ability do they have to advertise and leverage their millions upon millions of users they have gained over the years to launch a new product or service?
Many that prophesize Runescape’s death believe that it will come as a result of users getting “bored” with the game, which is normally just a reflection of where they and their friends are personally at more so than a reflection of the game being boring. The reality is Runescape has had relatively stable and positive growth for many years now not to mention is constantly updated so I’d arguable that boredom probably isn’t a high market threat. I on the other hand think the demise of Runescape will be at the hands of competition and the demise will be very swift taking place over the space of months.
What do you guys think?
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(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
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July 6th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
There are a lot of people, when they stop playing RuneScape don’t have a clue what to do. I think that keeps RuneScape strong.
Runescape Haven » Blog Archive » Runescape Keeps on Keeping On Says:July 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
[…] « Is Runescape Run By Gamers or Businessmen? […]
aly. Says:August 28th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Like Joost said, the addiction factor.
I, for one, don’t see the problem with runescape being run by people who would consider themselves gamers, rather than businessmen. Imo, there’s too great a shortage of such people in the gaming industry (though my knowledge of the rest of this industry’s *extremely* limited, rs being the only online game I play). It is precisely this that conceivably gives them an edge over competitors.
I’m also forced to admit, though, that a competitor overtaking Jagex is entirely possible. (Yep, Cassandra’s found herself some semblance of success. :P)
In that worst case scenario, Jagex would probably survive fine for a few months before things really do start going downhill. What players then would remain playing?
1. People like you. People who bother to maintain beautiful fansites like this. Small percentage, yes, but it’s something.
2. People like me. People who actively go round looking up external sites on rs.
3. Hardcore gamers. Those who’ve stayed with Jagex for years, even since classic.
4. People who’re just plain loyal. After you’ve played a game for some amount of time, you’ll be attached, whether you want to or not, to the game. It’s not something easy to break, or lose sight of.
5. The largest category, those just *addicted*. For some strange reason the addiction factor for rs is just. So. High. You might want to write up an article about why people play rs, if you haven’t already. It’s interesting, seeing people’s responses.
Coming off that though, I don’t believe runescape will really meet its “demise” anytime in the near future. It’s a very appealing game. Two main factors stand out - it’s free, and it’s good. Underlying factor beneath all that - runescape as yet seems to be run by gamers. Gamers who know what it’s like to play. Gamers who know what the player base wants, because they want that too.
And ultimately, that’s what matters.