Q & A with Andrew Gower on Runescape Success
With RuneScape developer, Jagex, recently announcing that it now has one million subcribers to the $5/month browser-based MMO, Gamasutra conducted a rare interview with Jagex co-founder and lead developer Andrew Gower about the UK-based firm’s stealth success.
With a recent survey claiming that Jagex’s RuneScape is the number two-grossing MMO title worldwide, Gamasutra quizzed Gower about the genesis of the title, how the firm has got to one million subscribers without making a big splash in the mainstream game biz, and the company’s plans for the future.
How did RuneScape start, and how has the game evolved over time?
Andrew Gower: I’ve always been into writing games, and have been making games since I was 7 - I played Dungeons & Dragons with my dad and brothers.
When I went to university, I discovered text-based MUDs, or multi-user dungeons. I loved the fact that these sorts of games had all these players playing at once - even when you were not playing, the world carried on without you. Because of this, I began creating my own text-based MUD, but I quickly realized that with so many of them out there, there was no way that mine would ever get noticed. So I began to search for a way to make mine stand out, and the obvious way, of course, was to add graphics.
With my game, I was trying to emulate text MUDs at the time, purely as a hobby. I worked on it on and off over a number of years…and I believe I started from scratch 3 or 4 times. I finally launched a version of the game after a left university in 2001. The basic plan was to run it for free, but to pay for my hobby through advertising. However, when the dot com bubble began to collapse, advertising dried up, and there was no way to pay for the game’s server.
This was really unfortunate because just the week before I had got 3 big servers for the game, and now was left with no way to pay for them. I began asking players for donations, but quickly decided that this was not the best way to go about it - to rely on people’s sympathy.
This is how the members thing came about, with awarding premium items for members. Of course, when you begin to have people pay for things, things become quite a bit more complicated than they did when things were free, and I realized that I needed a proper commercial side of things in order to run it as a business.
At this point I was quite desperate, because I couldn’t afford to keep up with the game, and without funding, all of the previous work would have gone down the drain. And it wasn’t as if we were offering a lot for subscribers, maybe 10 percent on top of the original game.
Basically what we did was calculate how many people we’d need to keep going, and came up with 5000. Thankfully, we managed to get like 2000 subscribers in the first hour, and had our 5000 in the first week. Once we had people paying, we were able to reinvest back into the game. The more we invested, the faster it grew.
What do you feel has been the biggest differentiating factor behind RuneScape’s popularity in making it to the one million subscriber milestone?
AG: I think one of the biggest things is the game’s continual updates. We’re constantly adding to the game, bringing new stuff in and improving it. It’s interesting, but with each addition, we see surges of growth.
We saw a huge surge with our recent addition of player houses, and again with our recent graphics update. The fact that we keep updating it, adding more to the experience, I think is key. Plus, people like having things to look forward to.
Do you plan on using the same underlying engine going forward - are there newer ones in the works?
AG: We plan to continue to use this same engine. We have been very pleased with the technology we’ve used with RuneScape, and we’ll continue to develop future products and games using this same engine.
Are the game’s demographics shifting over time as it grows in size – is it skewing younger or older?
AG: We don’t actually collect any demographic information on our users. We’re actually more focused on our product than marketing, so it’s hard to say. Some of the users believe that our game is played more by younger players, but I’m not entirely convinced that that is true. It might just be the fact that the younger players are more vocal, while more adult players play quieter and keep to themselves.
Can you talk a bit about your ad partnership with WildTangent, too — how it’s helped or evolved the company?
AG: Ah, well, it’s a fairly recent relationship, but of course advertising revenue is a very important part of what we we are doing. Advertising was originally our only revenue source, and these ads basically allow us to run the free version of the game. With the free version, we basically break even, but of course this version is very important to us as it brings in new players and introduces more people to the game.
As far as WildTangent goes, they are doing a pretty good job. They are better than some of the other companies we’ve work with, which served up generic advertisements. WildTangent actually goes out and servers up ads that are targeted to our players.
What are Jagex’s plans are for the future? Does the company plan to stick with browser-based MMOs, or is it ever looking to expand in other ways?
AG: We are quite happy with the online space, but always looking to diversify. As it stands, we don’t want to move away from our strengths too much, especially since everything we have done up to this point has been engineered to support this one type of product.
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(29 votes, average: 4.9 out of 5)
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September 6th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Good interview. Thanks for posting it.
Ryan Pellerin Says:September 28th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I want to thank Andrew Gower for being a personal inspiration for myself for being self made, and self motivated and being very successful in doing so. After playing his game Runescape for several years my parents always said “Why don’t you apply yourself in school and in work like you do in your game” I responded by saying that I haven’t found my nitch. After graduating High School I realized I liked money as much as I did my computer game Runescape. Now i am finishing up my last year of college obtaining my major in business. A young woman once told me that “life is all about doing things you do not want to do”. Andrew Gower has showed me that this woman is full-of-it. Perusing your dreams, feeling accomplished, and becoming successful as a result. This is what motivates me more than ever.
20 year old College student, Orange County, CA
Devante Mund Says:November 16th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Good Interview. Andrew Gower Is it True That Another Game Is coming Out. And it Is got something to do with space?
Andrew Alsante Says:January 4th, 2008 at 5:13 am
I love RuneScape. But recently the decisons that were made for dealing with RWT has been a disappointment. Kuddos to Andrew Gower for trying to do whats best for RuneScape. Although, the outcome wasn’t very good.
L Paintbal L
clement Says:January 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Hi, I really like playing your game Runescape, but this is one question/concern, why do you not show your face? I think many people are wanting to see your face, very mysterious though.. Anyways.. many thanks to you for making Runescape!
Christopher Rhys Jones Says:January 11th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I want to thank Andrew Gower for being a personal inspiration for myself and others.
After playing his game Runescape, for years my parents always say “Why don’t you apply yourself in a job and work like you do in your game” I would respond by saying that i loved the game and that it where my life.
Although owning a super computer capable of Crysis tm. so on i just thought that runescape was best as it was about the gameplay and not the Graphics. i didnt need a 768 8800gtx which i own and are ashamed by but i need just a 1mb graphics card. and only 64mb ram. The game is amazing and anyone can play i am glad that Runescape didn’t turn out to be terrible like the dodge World of Warcraft.
Thanks, Nird!
zach Says:January 17th, 2008 at 11:33 am
thank you andrew for making the game but the recent updates were quite disapointing but i’m gonna stay with the game because maybe things will change i heard next year will be beter than the new updates
u such Says:January 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
thank you andrew for wasteing 3 years of my life to a never ending game
bow Says:February 4th, 2008 at 3:57 am
Andrew Gower should be ashamed of himself. Why set up a site aimed ay young people then make it inpossible for you to contact him with problems unless you subscribe! the whole thing is set up to be abused by the low lifes than trawl the net. I hope you don’t have children or you might be as worried as I am at how hard it is to TELL YOU ANYTHING! CLOSE RUNESCAPE FOR GOOD!
Gower Lover Says:February 12th, 2008 at 1:20 am
‘m sure Andrew Gover is very conjurgated by the flowing messages here and there
The only way to contact him if being a staff member or have a carriere in the jagex office
and most certainly his family
Andrew Christopher Gower
JackPL Says:February 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hey Andrew Gower, I don’t have much to say, but I think you are a true Inspiration, I would love to make a Game like Runescape.
Take this as a Tip, I no longer play Runescape but still: Make it easier for people to Contact you, because at the moment it all seems just like a big Scam
Sorry as I don’t plan to be Offensive in any way.
Thanks
sam Says:February 16th, 2008 at 3:42 am
i have a couple of questions to ask you personally if possible:-
1) is it true that you hired a former CEO of paypal,Christies and many other big companies, someone who has never played the game, has no knowledge of the game but you decided to hire him as he can give you a substancial financial boost as was reported as you and your brother have been valued at £70 million from 06-07.
2) if most of the RWT used PayPal accounts, an account which is untraceable, how did you know they’re not honest players and RWT?
3) this is not much of a question, more of an opinion.
whomever RWT’d it honestly did NOT bother me or most of my freinds that play or played becuase we were honest. if somebody wanted to buy for their own personal gain, then it is their choice. i will happily bet you that if you ask 1000 random players what they thouht of RWT and about 1 in 100 will agree with the above. most of what people did was PK(player-kill) such as I and we didn’t care for money, we only had fun in the game through fighting.
the next generation of the runescape player knows nothing of the games passed, as i have seen some of the “next gen” players comment on sites such as this and youtube asking “what PK is?” or ” where they can find the wild?” These all show that the game is losing its pass, its speciality, its star ability. these are some reasons why lots of honest players have decided to quit..
Yours faithfully
I_Dnt_Skill - I_Dnt_K0
P.Sit has become increasingly hard to make money other than skills such as Woodcutting,Mining,Fishing and Hunting; all of which take time to master and earn money
Alec Says:February 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am
The “Andrew Gower” is quite obviously not real. I’m sure Mr. Gower would know how to spell “career” correctly.
Also the fact that he signed it, “Andrew Christopher Gower” makes it quite obvious that he’s not in fact the true Andrew Gower.
I’m sorry to burst your bubbles, but there is a very slim chance that Andrew will answer any of your questions posted here.
sam Says:March 4th, 2008 at 7:40 am
hello umm andrew gower is intresting my name is peter zezima and I personally love playing his game it to motivates me but i would like to compete against andrew . :] zezima
alex Says:March 14th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Jagex,
I’ve been playing runescape for some time now, I have seen a lot of things and done a lot of things in the game. There is only one thing I realy have to ask you. Please, do not make us wait for something that will never happen, please post on www.runescape.com if the wild is comeing back or not. Please do not post this on the forums. We all want to know . . .
A conserned friend,
Alex
P.S.
This will help you gain money and, we all promiss as runescape lovers that we will not complain in any way if we die. We all looked forward everyday to play in the old wild and have fun. The new bounty hunter is not filling in the old-wild-lovers-hearts. If you won’t do this for money or what ever you really want, do it for us, the people who have been with you from the very begining. Please, don’t break our hearts. WE MISS THE FUN.
ryuan46 Says:March 30th, 2008 at 1:31 am
I love RS! I’ve been playing since 2004, when I was introduced to the game from a friend. My daughter and others think I’m wasting my time on this game, but I love it when I discover something from the game and see it in Real Life. Whats funny is seeing something shiny in the street and thinking its a coin! Or something black and thinking its coal! Thank you, AG, for making RS so real. The fun for me is helping others get to 99. The Unbalanced Trades sent me for a loop, though. That is the hardest for me. But, each update has given us more, I for one want to see whats next. I’m not sure I like the idea of funorb, cuz that means your not working on RS. I’ve been having freeze and lagging issues because my computer is old. only 176 ram. But I play when I can. Thank you for a fun game.
skoal150 Says:April 3rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
can i start a sub domain on ur runescape web site plz.
drjman1 Says:by the way big fan
April 18th, 2008 at 1:54 am
dude you took the wildy away from us pkers man! Why couldn’t u just change some things around the wilderness instead of permantley taking pking out of it! thats was my favorite thing to do.
drjman1 Says:April 18th, 2008 at 1:57 am
I love the game ‘ve been playing since 2003, then you take away some players favorite thing about it. Couldn’t you make the wilderness where no noted items or cash was allowd, or if your not able to weild or use an item you cannot bring into the wild.