Gamasutra- interview with Jagex CEO Iddison

[Stragomagus]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=20623

 

 

 

[hide=]Jagex has quietly crafted in RuneScape the world's second-largest Western MMO -- with roughly 5.3 million active players per month, the free-to-play, browser-based title comes in just behind World of Warcraft. Now, the UK-based company's heading for a new frontier with a game portal called FunOrb.

 

 

 

The recently-launched site offers what the company calls "deep casual gaming" -- the aim's to provide deep and compelling game experiences within the same time frames usually associated with casual titles.

 

 

 

It's a promising idea with some unique aspects to it -- and is sure to pose a challenge for the company as it's tasked with maintaining its growth plans for thriving RuneScape at the same time. Jagex CEO Geoff Iddison talks to Gamasutra about the details of FunOrb and how it plans to balance its goals.

 

 

 

I first heard of RuneScape back when I was working in the specialist press. We'd always check our traffic position relative to other gaming websites -- and RuneScape was always the third-biggest!

 

 

 

Geoff Iddison: It's at least that -- probably number two. It's the second-biggest Western MMO, currently. If you look at the number of active players for our game over a month period, we're about 5.3 million per month. World of Warcraft is about 9.3 million, and number three is well behind us. We're number two in the Wstern world.

 

 

 

We launched our new game in March of this year called FunOrb. FunOrb is a deep casual game experience -- there's nothing quite like it on the market -- and we feel that it's really going to appeal to those ex-MMOG players who no longer have the time to play an MMO but want a deep, compelling gaming experience within an easily accessible, relatively short period of time. Playtime for the FunOrb games is between 12 and 40 hours, so it's deep minigames.

 

 

 

The whole business model of Jagex products, and this business model will go forward with our new MMO coming out next year, is free to play, and if you want deeper content, you pay a subscription. Subscription is five dollars a month for RuneScape and three dollars a month for FunOrb. To go into that content, you pay the monthly subscription, so it's basically a free to play model.

 

 

 

About 60 percent of the game content is behind that subscription barrier. In RuneScape, it may be different quests, the same quests but deeper, and it may be certain skills that you have. House building, for example, is a members' benefit. There's a number of skills and quests and things that you can't do as a free member.

 

 

 

How do you find that the subscription model works for you, in terms of free to play plus subscription?

 

 

 

GI: The subscription model works really well for us. We've got more than a million subscribers currently and growing, so it's worked well. Margins are very good and we're extremely profitable, so it works for us. But going forward, we are considering in our future MMOs having not just subscription but micropayments too.

 

 

 

Companies with several different MMOs can have a slight self-competing problem. How do you look at that issue?

 

 

 

GI: We don't know yet. But we positioned our new MMO at an older demographic than RuneScape. It's sci-fi, so it's a different genre altogether. You're not going to get people playing multiple MMO, they're going to be playing one at a time, so there may be some cannibalization of our RuneScape userbase going over to our new MMO. Tthe way we've positioned it is RuneScape, our new MMO, and then FunOrb, the deep casual game experience. So there should be a migration path from one to the other in those three games. But it's going to be interesting to see how it overlaps.

 

 

 

Can you explain the philosophy is behind deep casual games?

 

 

 

GI: We've got all of the infrastructure in place to do a full casual game offering to an audience that wants a multiplayer game. FunOrb is leveraging that technology and giving a far more satisfying, deeper playing experience; it's more satisfying from a graphics perspective and from a content perspective, and the subscription model is free to play.

 

 

 

40 hours of gameplay on a casual game is currently something that's not generally available on the marketplace. It's early days. We launched in March, and we've got around 300,000 uniques in a two or three week period. So it seems to be going well and the model seems to work. We've got a new game going live on FunOrb every two weeks -- the same as RuneScape; new content goes onto RuneScape every two weeks.

 

 

 

What goes into these updates?

 

 

 

GI: Some updates have taken a year or 18 months to develop, like the update that we did around three months ago, and some updates are relatively minor.

 

 

 

We watch our forums and take the feedback very seriously and use that feedback in a lot of cases to improve the game. We have a player poll every two weeks as well, asking them what they'd like to see and what they don't like and whatever else.

 

 

 

It's one of the first social networking sites, RuneScape. It's been around since 2001, and potentially, it has over 130 million people on that network, so that feedback that we have is always taken seriously and we plug it into the game in development.

 

 

 

What's your primary demographic?

 

 

 

GI: RuneScape's demographic is from 7 to 18, with a sweet spot being around 13, 14, or 15. It's 85 percent male, but we're keen to get more females into the game. There's puzzles that are aimed at the female audience, as opposed to the PvP stuff, which is more male-oriented.

 

 

 

After 18 is where FunOrb comes in. People at college perhaps haven't got the time to spend 12 or 14 hours a week out on RuneScape and MMOs, so naturally they'll graduate onto something else. But this is where our new MMOG comes in. We're hoping to collect a lot of those people graduate out of RuneScape to our new MMO.

 

 

 

But we've got a lot of people over 40 playing Runescape; we have whole families playing the game. We have granddads and grandmas meeting their siblings, nieces, and nephews within the game. We want to appeal to the whole. For anyone who wants to play RuneScape, there's something in there for them.

 

 

 

Your strategy is to stay completely browser-based for all of your products?

 

 

 

GI: Absolutely. It's so compelling, and I think other companies are seeing this now. So the distribution model of the browser base is just fantastic. There's no third parties. We are the developer and the publisher. Anywhere in the world, you can access your MMOG. You don't need a high-spec PC. With any PC that's connected to the internet, you can just log on and you're there in your game with your avatar. That model is just so good for us, and we feel it's going to become more competitive in this space because the model's so good.

 

 

 

However, the barriers to entry on a massive MMO which is browser-based are pretty high. The infrastructure that we've got in place not just from a technical perspective, but the design, is pretty sophisticated. The black mark system, all of the filters, the chat filters, the policing of the game... those things are pretty high barriers to entry. You don't go diving into the browser-based MMO market without having to overcome some of those hurdles. It's not just a matter of getting a game out there.

 

 

 

And there's a whole regulatory perspective of this as well, with an MMO that's browser-based and accessible from anyone's PC, you want to make sure it's safe to play. That's why half of our company is dedicated to player support.[/hide]

 

 

 

To be featured on gamasutra means Jagex is making huge strides into the video-game market as a whole.

[Chazimcgee]

Fantastic interview

 

 

 

Really sheds some light on common misconceptions with jagex

[XxTearGodxX]

Nice interview, seems Jagex is doing quite well with their business. Can't wait for their 2nd MMO, I just hope it doesn't get in the way of RuneScape Updates. :oops:

[Mr_Adam]

Nice interview, seems Jagex is doing quite well with their business. Can't wait for their 2nd MMO, I just hope it doesn't get in the way of RuneScape Updates. :oops:

 

 

 

The new MMO (MechScape) shouldn't get in the way of RS updates. They'll have a seperate team to work on it,(that's what would create the competition in the same party they asked about).

[Danqazmlp]

Pretty much knew most of this, but its nice that the people in charge know it too. Its been obvious to most of us that the age they aim at with runescape is as said, but its nice to see there aiming at a higher age with mechscape, much as runescape was when it was first released. I also totally agree about funorb, getting bored of runescape, funorb was the first thing i went to, and its incredibly smart moving by jagex.

[Emmentail]

I find it funny that he thinks that pvp is aimed at men.. Since when do women not like to tear each others hair out and smack someone with a scimitar?

[Winner5555]

Was a good interview, they just used "deep, casual game" a couple too many times for my liking #-o

[Altra]

That's why half of our company is dedicated to player support.

 

 

 

:shock: That can't mean the same thing as customer support, right? If they had that many people on customer support surely you wouldn't get so many irrelevant automated messages...? :?

[n_odie]

I really enjoyed it! :thumbup:

[Barihawk]

That's why half of our company is dedicated to player support.

 

 

 

:shock: That can't mean the same thing as customer support, right? If they had that many people on customer support surely you wouldn't get so many irrelevant automated messages...? :?

 

 

 

Imagine recieving 500 account issues per day, then add managing 4000 credit card transactions to make sure they go smoothly, then we have player bug reports, then we have ban appeals and investigations, and then throw on top of that player rule infraction reporting (you can imagine there are a lot of reports).

[Kimberly]

Hm. New statistical figures. I could've sworn a few months (maybe a year) ago there was more P2P females than P2P males, if only by a few percentage points.

 

 

 

:-k

[Kawtss]

Nice interview. Gave me a bit to think about.

 

Hearing that about 85% of players are male made ma laugh, and I fail to see how pking is male based and puzzles are ment to be for females -.- .

 

Haha, good interview, enjoyed it.

[alphakoldes]

Every time any article like this happens and it says ANYTHING other than "RS is shutting down" it really makes me believe this game is on the way UP.

[X3EN]

It was kinda sad to hear that RS is primarily aimed at 7-18 age group. That gives them the excuse to bring out quests with lame storyline (not to mention the untested rewards), and while projects like TruthScape and similar handed out many suggestions against scamming, insults and safe-play, that really improved gameplay experience (yes, it may seem it degraded the gameplay to some people), but overall I enjoy not seeing 10 bots near every yew in f2p/p2p, not seeing people constantly trying to scam someone, or people crying about being scammed (trying to scam you at the very moment) and such. If jagex was listening only to the group they're aiming, they would probably be just adding 5x more powerful equipment and such... At least they still manage to treat RS as 'something for everyone'. Hopefully later they will come up with an idea to balance it so their target audience would become wider.

[tintin113]

Very interesting to read, but I too was surprised about the 7-18 bit... I mean anyone claiming to be under 13 has to use quickchat, and quickchat is massively inefficient - I'm currently temp. muted so yes I have experienced it - if I had to play and MMO for more than a week locked to quickchat I'd quit.

[Aresgodowar]

APPARENTLY im not supposed to want to play this game...

[mervinator_9]

not going to get people playing multiple MMO, they're going to be playing one at a time, so there may be some cannibalization of our RuneScape userbase going over to our new MMO

 

 

 

Interesting, Right now if this new game came out I'd probably jump ship. If its anything like Rs/what Jagex has described it will be.

 

 

 

After that I kinda knew most of what be was saying, apart from the fact that half of jagex is employed for customer support.

[Will H]

APPARENTLY im not supposed to want to play this game...

 

No, it just means that you're in the minority, which is fine.

 

 

 

I like this article, it's good to see that they're keeping the browser based (and presumably Java) model with Mechscape, but I do wish they'd stop pretending that the title is a secret.

[LinovUSA]

Very interesting.

[JIM]

Anyone got any links for info on Mechscape?

[Maximusa]

Interesting they have admitted its a childs game. Hmm I think they feeling brave with this new game.

 

 

 

"deep casual gaming" Whatever the hell is that lol? Is a it a nice way of saying 'Even casual gamers can keep their attention span lasting long enough to finish our games' ??. Tbh FunOrb is meant for mothers with children and people who want a quick easy accessible game at work. Casual gamers buy some shooter and dont want 'deep' gameplay. Which is fine. You cant have both 'deep' and 'casual' combined. I think its aimed at gamers who dont have the money to buy better pcs..mothers..people at work..but then even runescape can handle most poor pcs. So its those who are at work and college etc. Those nerds in the library.

 

 

 

Thats all fine and dandy but what is a 'gamer' meant to do. I aint a 'casual gamer' and am over 18. The reason i pick runescape is for the challenge. I find most games very easy. Although technically runescape is also easy it is also very challenging and take alot dedication. Both children and adults alike can join in on this challenge. FunOrb offers neither and is very boring. I tried it for a while and yes quick games can be cool too but I want something a bit more involved. So I pick runescape over even other more up to date games. Probably less skill but then I been there and done that and wanted something different. For me its not even to do with hardware; my machine still runs well for most games.. Cost enough, but I find this game more of a challenge = Fun. Even all the new games are aimed at these casual gamers tbh. I dont think FunOrb is much different to all the new titles coming out besides being browser based. Which as they have admitted works very well for them so the best of luck. I donno why they think everyone 18 really enjoys FunOrb though..Seems no different than runescape.

 

 

 

Instead of aiming for children they should never abandoned the more dedicated gamer. Tbh jagex as a company I dont trust much so when they say this new game is aimed at a higher audience - I dont believe them. I still manage to cope in runescape though so it possibly doesnt matter. Possibly it will attract older people but I doubt it be any different than what runescapes population is now.

 

 

 

Im pretty sure more women play than that too. If runescape doesnt appeal to women then why do they think a sci-fi game will huh lol.

[me]

Anyone got any links for info on Mechscape?

 

There is my site MechScape World which is the first MechScape fansite. Most of the latest information is in the Confirmed News Section on the forum. The forum's gallery also has much more concept art in it than the main site's one. There are some other sites which aren't mine, but they are less comprehensive and mostly just copy the early research I did for MechScape Central.

[Mirror]

Sounds like any other interview that Jagex talks in. I was interested when they hope that Mechscape will be for those that have "graduated" from Runescape, because I am definitely starting to fit into that category now especially since I am in the minority when it comes to their demographics. So they have my interested currently.

[Zantareous]

There's puzzles that are aimed at the female audience, as opposed to the PvP stuff, which is more male-oriented.

 

 

 

Girls love puzzles, who knew?

[pulli23]

Sounds like any other interview that Jagex talks in. I was interested when they hope that Mechscape will be for those that have "graduated" from Runescape, because I am definitely starting to fit into that category now especially since I am in the minority when it comes to their demographics. So they have my interested currently.

 

I too get the feeling I'm that "unwanted but necessary minority": wherever I go people just seem not to be interested into some "deep" chatting, if I even say the word "molecule" 99% of the people call me nerd and no one wants a conversation. And if I say that 1 of my friends was found in bed with a stranger I'm about to get muted!

 

 

 

Only biggest problem is those "micro-payments": I have a strict policy to evade those kind of payment methods with games completely. So I wonder if mechscape will have those: if they have I'll stick to runescape otherwise it's worth a look!