Jagex

Jagex are the creators of FunOrb, and also publish other online games.

Jagex Ltd. (also known as Jagex Software or JaGeX Games Studio) is a United Kingdom-based producer of Java-based online video games, whose name is a contracted form of Java Gaming Experts or Just About the Gaming Experience. The company name is pronounced [ˈdʒæɡɛks], as spoken by former CEO Geoff Iddison in August 2008. The company is best-known for its MMORPG RuneScape.

Jagex is a well-received company, ranking 59th on the Sunday Times' 100 Best Companies in the UK to Work For list for 2007, having been unranked for 2006. However, this slipped to number 87 for 2008.

History

The name Jagex Software has been in use since at least 1999 and was originally described as a "small software company based in England [who] specialise in producing top-quality Java-games for webpages".

According to Companies House, Meaujo (492) Limited was incorporated on 28 April 2000, and changed its name to Jagex Limited on 27 June 2000. The Jagex website states that the company was founded in December 2001 by Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder. The aim of this company was to operate its MMORPG, RuneScape , which had been in development since 1999. By the time of the company's founding, one year after the release of the game, RuneScape already had over one million free accounts registered. The first tasks of the company were to create a version of the game with extra features that required a £3.25 ($5 USD) monthly fee, while still offering the free version, and to develop partnerships with advertisers. Both tasks were achieved, and the pay-to-play version of RuneScape was released on 27 February 2002, gaining 5,000 subscriptions in the first week making RuneScape one of the largest Java pay-to-play games in the world. On 4 May 2007, Jagex announced that RuneScape has over 9,000,000 free players and over 1,000,000 pay-to-play subscribers. In 2006, Andrew and Paul Gower were calculated to be worth £32 million. On "The Rich List 2007", Andrew and Paul are under claims to be worth £106 million ($190 million USD). Andrew Gower is also known for his varieties of Java games. Jagex also received an investment from Insight Venture Partners in October 2005. The company had been self-funded before this investment. RuneScape has since been translated into German, French and recently in Portuguese. Jagex was ranked 59th on the list of The Best 100 Companies to work for by the Sunday Times.

Jagex co-creator Andrew Gower still works with Jagex workers every day, and you use to be able to see Jagex employees on the 'Jagex cam', from the Jagex offices.

Future development

Jagex have stated on their website that they "intend to become a significant online operator in all the major gaming markets worldwide" by developing new games using their own technologies."

There have been many rumours of Jagex's next big release, and Jagex has confirmed that it will be releasing a new MMOG called MechScape. This game, which was planned to be released in Q1 of 2009, but was delayed, will probably be called MechScape, although Jagex changed its name to Stellar Dawn. It will be a futuristic MMOG that will break away from RuneScape's homely roots but will still be browser based. The game will be aimed at a higher age range and will be slightly or wholly sci-fi. It was officially confirmed by Jagex at the gaming event E3 on 15 July 2008. However it was canceled in August 2009 but confirmed on a mechscape forum (mechscapeworld) to being redone and get a name change to Stellar Dawn.

Jagex also acts as the publisher of the online flash-based game called "War of Legends". It is a multiplayer real time strategy game, which was released in January 2010 and it is currently in beta testing phase.

Operation

Jagex has grown since the founding of the company in 2001. They currently have offices in Cambridge and London. The company had been recruiting heavily in 2006 and has over 400 employees, grouped into the Development, Publishing, Web Content, Minigame, and Customer Relations teams.

They maintain about 161 servers for RuneScape in various locations around the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Some of the more recent additions to the servers include the addition of the German, French and Portuguese servers. These are currently the only servers for non-English versions of the game thus far, but Jagex has confirmed that more languages are planned.

YouTube channel

Also in early 2008, Jagex created their own YouTube channel, called "thejagexchannel", which is "The official YouTube channel for Jagex Ltd, producers of quality online games based on Java technology."

Jagex has verified the authenticity of the channel, and has stated that it is permissible for RuneScape players to discuss openly the videos on the channel. This is an exception to their general policy, which is that discussion of specific YouTube videos in-game is prohibited.

The channel currently contains ten videos. The first seven videos are previews of FunOrb games. The last two videos are about the July 2008 major graphics update.

Back in 2006, a player had made a YouTube channel and titled it "jagex", though currently disclaims to actually be Jagex. Probably for this reason, Jagex the company named their channel "thejagexchannel".

Jagex also has a twitter account called Official Jagex, a Facebook, and a LiveJournal called "TheJagexLJ".

It has been noted by Mark Gerhard that he will be using the Jagex YouTube page more and will be interacting more with RuneScape players on YouTube.

External links

• Jagex's games index site
• Jagex corporate homepage
• Photos at Jagex Headquarters
• YouTube - Jagex's Channel
• Jagex Central (First Jagex Fansite)
• RuneScape homepage
• FunOrb homepage
• FunOrb Wiki homepage
• MechScape Wiki homepage
• Jagex Wiki homepage