Back in August I wrote an article titled “Does Jagex Have Any Enthusiasm For Stellar Dawn?” In it, I referred to the disconnect between the complete lack of information regarding Jagex’s upcoming MMO and the fact that in August of the (at the time) release year, information on the game was virtually nonexistent. No screenshots, very vague trailers, and barely enough information regarding gameplay t fill a synopsis. Considering Jagex’s upcoming release of Transformers Universe, and the fact that Stellar Dawn is already saddled with the major financial disaster that was MechScape, I questioned whether or not Jagex had the will or desire to ever complete Stellar Dawn.
Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard has confirmed today that development on Stellar Dawn has ceased. In a post on the RuneScape forums, Gerhard says that the decision was not made lightly and was driven by the need to concentrate resources on Jagex’s other titles.
Rest assured that we will review the status of the Stellar Dawn project in the future so long as an appetite for the game remains. I hope Jagex can rely on your ongoing support.
RuneScape’s roots go back ten years, to 2001 where the game was a simple at home project by Andrew Gower. With the Gowers now mostly absent (they resigned from the Board of Directors in December 2010), the torch has been passed to Mark Gerhard to keep the developer moving in its upward trend. Granted, Jagex has multiple MMOs in production (Stellar Dawn and Transformers Online, to name just the two slated for release this year), so the rise in revenue but dip in profits reported for 2010-2011 was to be expected at some extent.
But fret not, investors and gamers. To the former, Jagex isn’t some cheap floozy willing to take just anyone’s money. In an interview with Games Industry, Mark Gerhard wants to set the record straight that Jagex dates very, very selectively.
Nothing has changed as far as the company goes. It’s the same management team, we’ve obviously been at the helm for quite some time and to the best of our knowledge and expectation it will continue to be so. Sure we therefore have some American shareholders, but the management and the culture and the ethos and everything else is the same people, in the same hands, and staunchly British.
Gerhard attributes the dip in profits to Jagex investing more in the company instead of paying dividends, a move which apparently began around the time Insight Ventures attained 55% ownership in Jagex (end of 2010). He also paints a picture that, regardless of the shift in majority ownership, nothing has changed at Jagex since Insight Ventures took the majority vote.
Jagex has quite an interesting year ahead of it, what with continued investment in RuneScape, the recent launch of their HTML-based game 8Realms, and the upcoming launches of Transformers Online and Stellar Dawn.
(Source: Gamesindustry.biz) You’ll need to be registered to view the article.
Jagex’s CEO Mark Gerhard would like to see Runescape on consoles, but refuses to segregate the community by platform. In a comment to Develop Online, Gerhard has stated that Jagex is well-positioned to ship a console version of Runescape, but has been stopped at all corners by the big three: Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. The subject of free to play is one that Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata hates with a passion, Microsoft opposes (Gerhard comments that “one console” wanted them to charge five euros mandatory for use) and Sony is the only of the three that would like to add Runescape to its free to play initiative.
Where the three giants agree, however, is not allowing the community to interact with those on rival platforms.
“We’re not going to frame [as in, segregate] our community into boxes just for a few million more customers. Of course I’d love a few million more customers, but I just wouldn’t do it. Not at the expense of fracturing it, because you almost become the disease you’re trying to solve.”
And yes, Final Fantasy XI is an MMO on the 360 with cross-console play to Playstation 2 users. This is a title we consider grandfathered in, because it was developed long before Microsoft or Sony had the volatile stance that they do now. Don’t fret, however, as Gerhard is not giving up the goal, and expresses trust that the big three will open up their doors eventually.
“But we’re well placed to be on all devices soon,” he added, “so we can have a global community”.
With the cancellation of Mechscape, you might think Jagex would put most of their focus on their current MMO Runescape and upcoming MMO Stellar Dawn, but in an interview published today by Eurogamer, CEO Mark Gerhard thinks otherwise. When questioned on the technical aspects of Runescape and Stellar Dawn, Gerhard stated the following:
“A lot of what we’ve done to push the boundary for Stellar Dawn will benefit RuneScape and another MMO we’re working on,”
In the same interview, Gerhard was asked if Jagex would like to go back to a fantasy MMO, to which he replied;
“We do, we totally do. We’re working on it as we speak.”
Luckily for those of you playing Runescape, Gerhard stated that Jagex still sees the game as their foremost product for at least ten more years. 2020 Runescape? That is a lot of discontinued holiday items! I reported just last week on Mark Gerhard referring to Free Realms as “insipid,” to which the Eurogamer interviewer was keen enough to get a following comment:
“Having played Free Realms there’s very little I get out of it. To me it just screams design by committee: 20 different people from 20 different focus groups to say, “Let’s have a little bit of this for the girls, let’s have a little bit of that for the boys, let’s get the six-year-olds, let’s get the 16-year-olds.” If you want a game for a six year-old you’ve got it, it’s called Club Penguin.
If you take a brand that accentuates its own identity, it’s going to resonate with the target demographic really well. Free Realms tries to be all things to all men and women and ends up being nothing.”
Check out the full interview, as Gerhard gives some insight into why Mechscape was cancelled, what parts are continuing to Stellar Dawn, among other issues.
More on Stellar Dawn, Runescape, and this new MMO as it appears.
Mark Gerhard, current CEO of Jagex, isn’t a bad guy by any means. Hell, he was featured here on MMO Fallout specifically this past March for his help in toppling the court case of Evony Vs a blogger. Runescape players may be at a divide on his positive or negative impact on the game, but it seems as though his presence has brought Runescape far more into the news than in previous years.
It isn’t exactly private knowledge that Sony once had plans to invest in Jagex back in 2005, that were scrapped for a simple reason, as noted by Gerhard;
“John Smedley said, ‘I can do this myself.'”
You will of course be aware that Sony Online Entertainment moved to create their own rendition of a browser based MMO, Free Realms, that launched last year and quickly shot up in registered users. Mark Gerhard, in a recent interview with Eurogamer (the full interview is yet to be posted at the time of this writing), is not impressed.
“The thing that saved us was that Free Realms was perfectly designed by committee. It was 100 per cent micro-transactions, 100 per cent subscriptions, 100 per cent male, 100 per cent female. As a result, it was neither fish nor fowl; it didn’t resonate with anyone, didn’t have any identity. It was, I guess, largely insipid, gorgeous graphics and everything else, but it didn’t have have the joie de vivre.”
Harsh words, and unfortunately for John Smedley and Free Realms, Gerhard has the Guinness Book record to back it up. Hopefully there will be more information when the full interview goes live.
As its players have pointed out to me in the past, there is really not much difference between Evony and other video games. It’s a game, for starters, it is played with a keyboard and mouse, and is played entirely through a browser. It is owned by a Chinese gold farming company, and did I mention that most companies use scantily clad women (or just shots of breasts, as seen above) to sell their games? Don’t forget, you can play it free forever.
Here is a question for the budding internet lawyers in the room: How does a Chinese company pretending to be American justify suing a British blogger in Australia? The whole thing sounds like either a poorly put together joke, or the kind of litigation taught in the same university that Jack Thompson received his degree at (Vanderbilt Law School, for those keeping track). Needless to say, this is exactly what happened when UMGE, I mean Evony LLC, decided to sue UK blogger Bruce Everiss, veteran games industry marketer.
The charge was libel, the evidence? Claims by Everiss that Evony was run by a Chinese company, and that company was linked to a goldfarming operation. The lawsuit has been pretty quiet for a while now (these court cases take a long time to get going), until the unveiling that Evony LLC has dropped the case only two days into proceedings. The official reason for the dropped case, according to Evony’s legal division, was feedback and criticism from their player base.
Evony will be required to pay the A$114,000 in addition to a second fee of A$80,000 or else the court proceedings will reconvene. According to The Guardian, the cost of their legal strategy alone could run Evony more than double the hundred grand they will be forced to pay for Everiss’ legal fees. In Australia, only companies with fewer than 10 employees can sue for libel, this likely being one of the factors that ultimately killed the lawsuit.
The intrigue doesn’t stop there! In his thank you post, Bruce Everiss gave a special show of gratitude to Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard, whose “testimony to the court helped enormously.” Everiss did not go into detail on exactly what the testimony was, but I think it’s safe to say that Mark Gerhard has made his way into the good grace of plenty of gamers.
Between aiding the potentially suicidal, stopping theft, and fighting crime, it seems more and more MMO developers are striving to prove that the customer-business relationship doesn’t have to be so distant. Maybe if UMGE sues me for this article, Mark Gerhard will come to my rescue.
It always pains me to see an MMO fail before it is even launched. As is the case with Mechscape, Jagex’s upcoming Science Fiction MMO, a spiritual successor to Runescape, as CEO Mark Gerhard confirmed to Eurogamer today that the title is indeed canned.
In an interview with Mechscapeworld.com, Mark Gerhard had this to say:
“Sadly the game was not as complete as we wanted and we spent the first few months trying to “fix” the game where we could. About a month or so ago we took the decision to stop trying to “fix it” as we still wouldn’t have the game we wanted and the game certainly did not meet all the objectives and specifications established in the original game design document and therefore it would be better to go back to the founding principles and build the game we always wanted –Andrew [Gower] is now overseeing the project and working very closely with the team to build Stellar Dawn, not all was lost as we naturally have developed the game engine substantially over the last few years and the new designs benefits massively from this as well as a ton of experience within the team as to what works and what doesn’t. So whilst the content and a lot of the game play will change from what was previously built almost everything else will go straight back into Stellar Dawn.” – Mark Gerhard
With the death of one comes the rise of another. Innovations brought about by the production of Mechscape have gone towards the production of Stellar Dawn, a different yet somehow similar MMO to the little guy who never had a chance.
Hopefully Jagex has learned the same truth that Richard Garriot learned with Tabula Rasa: Just because you are an established name, does not guarantee all of your products will succeed.
On that note, it is good to see Jagex catching up to the rest of the mmo world in terms of features. The company just launched a name changing service, and is currently beta testing a feature to see a log of your character’s activity, including amount of time played (see WoW Armory)
MMO Fallout 