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Why did Andrew Leave, Again?


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Andrew Gower left RuneScape a while back. This isn't new news by any means, but a new article that was published highlights some of the things he's doing, and touches on some of the reasons that he departed.

 

http://www.develop-o...pe-Andrew-Gower

 

For the most part, the reasons fall in line with why any normal developer would leave a company - even one they started - they wanted to do something new, but felt either distracted or inhibited by the major project at hand.

 

...Is that why you felt the need to leave Jagex and start this up. Could you not have started it there?

I could have done, but it would have almost have been a distraction. It was very different from what Jagex was doing, which was focusing on MMOs. The danger of me doing it there would have been that it would have been on the sidelines and an annoying little distraction; ‘Andrew’s pet project’ so to speak, as opposed to being a serious thing in its own right.

 

 

...So it was about getting the right freedom?

Yes, and without the distraction of a massive project like RuneScape that demanded a lot of attention.

It was almost impossible to not get sucked into it working on that alone every waking hour because it’s such a big project.

 

From a developer's standpoint, I can see where he's coming from. If one has an idea, but one is back by something that's majorly time consuming (like RuneScape), it's better for both parties to separate - the developer, so they can focus more on what they want to do, and the company, so they can focus more on their major thrust.

 

Hopefully, two things come of this:

  • He becomes successful with his project, releasing it to indies and studios alike, and offering a competitive platform for people to develop games, and
  • All talk of him abandoning Jagex because he couldn't stand their direction is squashed.

He doesn't talk about Jagex directly, though, which is interesting in its own right.

Linux User/Enthusiast Full-Stack Software Engineer | Stack Overflow Member | GIMP User
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...Alright, the Elf City update lured me back to RS over a year ago.

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Profiling for easy re-read later... just don't have the time right now to think about it. :(

 

~D. V. "On the go, big time..." Devnull

tifuserbar-dsavi_x4.jpg and normally with a cool mind.

(Warning: This user can be VERY confusing to some people... And talks in 3rd person for the timebeing due to how insane they are... Sometimes even to themself.)

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I've been following him on Twitter for sometime now and he frequently talks about his new game company that he's working on. He seems to be fully dedicated to this new game and it's actually looking quite interesting so far.

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Currently hold the rank of 'Honoured' Member in OTG.

Some pretty impressive player vs monster achievements.

I've had fifty two sigils since release of corporeal beast.

I've had sixty three drops from Nex in under six months.

Close to 3 billion gold from doing player vs monster.

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His company site: http://www.fenresearch.com/

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[hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide][hide]

Never gonna give you up.[/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide][/hide]

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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lol so something similar to game maker.. Seems he's trying to reinvent the wheel (and frankly I doubt he has the same experience as the original creators of GTA, lemmings & head of xbox europe).... Weird those companies suddenly start everywhere now that flash is in end of life.

First they came to fishing

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't fishing

 

Then they came to the yews

and I didn't speak out because I didn't cut yews

 

Then they came for the ores

and I didn't speak out because I didn't collect ores

 

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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lol so something similar to game maker.. Seems he's trying to reinvent the wheel (and frankly I doubt he has the same experience as the original creators of GTA, lemmings & head of xbox europe).... Weird those companies suddenly start everywhere now that flash is in end of life.

 

Why do you say flash is at the end of its life? If anything, I see tons more people adopting it for their casual games and site elements.

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lol so something similar to game maker.. Seems he's trying to reinvent the wheel (and frankly I doubt he has the same experience as the original creators of GTA, lemmings & head of xbox europe).... Weird those companies suddenly start everywhere now that flash is in end of life.

 

Why do you say flash is at the end of its life? If anything, I see tons more people adopting it for their casual games and site elements.

Games fair enough but if anyone is using flash over html5/jquery etc for site elements they are living in the wrong decade.
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Mercifull <3 Suzi

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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lol so something similar to game maker.. Seems he's trying to reinvent the wheel (and frankly I doubt he has the same experience as the original creators of GTA, lemmings & head of xbox europe).... Weird those companies suddenly start everywhere now that flash is in end of life.

 

Why do you say flash is at the end of its life? If anything, I see tons more people adopting it for their casual games and site elements.

 

Because it is; actually most developers agree that for any web aplications (site elements & games are part of that) HTML5 is much more powerful, more secure - "easier" to handle (cross compatible by design), and least but not last an open standard.

 

And the refusal from iOS to allow for flash (yet they do allow html5), as well as google & mozilla working more native html5 components (webgl is a standard to access the native graphic card through the HTML5 component of any web page). For both their browsers as well as android, is a sure indication in which basket one should put their eggs.

 

The only thing HTML5 currently doesn't handle as well are things required for portal sites - it is "not" possible if you open a webpage/game through a portal site that this game makes a connection to it's another (the actual game creators) site: but then again HTML5 is only a few years old and there's a large momentum (through a collabirate support of google, apple & microsoft). So probably in the future portal sites will change (to act also as proxy for multiplayer games & proxy the data to the actual game host).

First they came to fishing

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't fishing

 

Then they came to the yews

and I didn't speak out because I didn't cut yews

 

Then they came for the ores

and I didn't speak out because I didn't collect ores

 

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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no longer used as much =/= end of its life

What about the developer (Adobe) completely dropping mobile support and trying to get people to use Edge instead of Flash?

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Mercifull <3 Suzi

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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no longer used as much =/= end of its life

 

did you read my post? The amount of influence flash has on web development is actually rapidly becoming smaller - and this is also seen by adobe, who actually are not pushing flash forward anymore as the end all best item.

First they came to fishing

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't fishing

 

Then they came to the yews

and I didn't speak out because I didn't cut yews

 

Then they came for the ores

and I didn't speak out because I didn't collect ores

 

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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come at me

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396094,00.asp "Adobe Flash Meets Its End"

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Mercifull <3 Suzi

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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I don't understand the question.

 

Why did he leave? Because he most likely realized his game was at or just past its peak in prime, and at that point he was poised to make a LOT of money.

 

I DO NOT blame him for leaving. If I was in his boots, I would do the same exact thing. I actually have asked why Marc Z didn't sell facebook it its prime. I can respect a man for sticking it through thick and thin for something he created, but I also can respect a man for collecting his due for the same thing.

 

Andrew Gower outlived the dotcom boom and flourished. I congratulate him for what he's done.

 

I blame the newer CEOs for selling the game out. Not him.

 

I doubt I'll ever know or play his upcoming game(s) but I HOPE, and hope is a strong word, that they may receive the same sort of success that RuneScape did. However, I doubt it. Not this day and age.

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No someone who just leaves the ship is never a good captain.

 

A captain is always to leave the ship as last, and be first on board: those are traits of leadership.

First they came to fishing

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't fishing

 

Then they came to the yews

and I didn't speak out because I didn't cut yews

 

Then they came for the ores

and I didn't speak out because I didn't collect ores

 

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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No someone who just leaves the ship is never a good captain.

 

A captain is always to leave the ship as last, and be first on board: those are traits of leadership.

While he's a captain of the ship, yes. But any captain is allowed to change ships (or become a farmer or whatever).
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No someone who just leaves the ship is never a good captain.

 

A captain is always to leave the ship as last, and be first on board: those are traits of leadership.

While he's a captain of the ship, yes. But any captain is allowed to change ships (or become a farmer or whatever).

 

Yet a captain can never leave the ship unless he knows it is in save lands, it is actually a crime if a captain leaves the ship before the others. (As seen by the ferry earlier this year in italy, where the captain left the sinking ship as first and is now in jail for leaving instead of helping).

 

I'm also not saying that andrew should not leave RS: be my guest and leave.. But saying he deserves respect for that, and would be stupid not to leave is something I disagree with. Things that earn respect are people who devote their life for a company. Keeping a company the "family" feeling of a small company yet very influental in the world. (for example how the philips family made philips one of the largest companies between 1900 & 1980, after that it went downhill as investors came into the picture & fritz philips had to retire for old age).

First they came to fishing

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't fishing

 

Then they came to the yews

and I didn't speak out because I didn't cut yews

 

Then they came for the ores

and I didn't speak out because I didn't collect ores

 

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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Jagex is not a ship.

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Mercifull <3 Suzi

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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Andrew built the ship, he was never the captain.

The captains:

Constant Tedder 2001-2007

Geoff Iddison 2007-2009

Mark Gerhard 2009-present

 

 

Jagex is not a ship.

If it's not a ship, why is it sinking?

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I don't think Jagex is sinking... yet. If you are going to stick with boating themes I would say it's listing. It can be brought back level and full steam ahead provided it's steered the right way in future.

612d9da508.png

Mercifull.png

Mercifull <3 Suzi

"We don't want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn't affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape" Jagex 01/04/01 - 02/03/12

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If you're using this methaphor, then it'd be appropriate to say that pirates (Investors) boarded the ship. They're using up the resources while it's still going and trying to make the most of it before they find something else to plunder. Mark Gerhard, while CEO, doesn't have as much say as people think. He may be the one to announce things, but at the end of the day the investors are running the machine.

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RIP Michaelangelopolous

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Ships? Pirates? Sailing!

 

If we're all so into metaphors, I think of it like this. A chef starts a little restaurant where he spends most of his time in the kitchen, making new dishes. Everyone loves these unique foods, so the restaurant becomes more popular. Eventually because of demand another one opens in the chain. The chef takes on the responsibility of running that one as well. He still can cook, but his time is slowly shifting more towards the actual managing of the business. 10 years down the road and multiple restaurants in the chain, the chef is no longer able to do anything in the kitchen as he spends all of his time on the business side of the restaurant. He may be making a boatload of money, and it's his 'baby', but he's not doing what he truly loves: innovating in the kitchen. I don't blame that chef for selling the chain to start another small restaurant where he can do what he truly loves, and not just sit behind a desk signing papers all day.

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I think of it like a dude creating a pretty successful company and then selling his share for a decent amount of money.

 

No, it has to be something else. Like a tiger in the jungle and the parrot is representative of lost opportunities, so colorful but so fleeting. The trees are obstacles that must be navigated around. Gorillas represent man's inhumanity to man. You get where I'm going with this. There is clearly metaphor all over this and no way it is as simple as you said.

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Trying is just the first step in failure.

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