Jagex

Jagex Ltd. (also known as Jagex Software or JaGeX Games Studio) and previously called Meaujo Ltd. is a United Kingdom-based producer of Java-based online video games, whose name is contracted from Java Gaming Experts or Just About the Gaming Experience. The company name is pronounced \ˈdʒæ.ɡɛks\, 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". Andrew Gower tweeted on the RuneFest Twitter that the original Jagex office was "two meters by three meters with a table and PC we had borrowed".

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 £3.20 ($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 ($168 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 staff every day.

Around December of 2011, Jagex finished preparation of a full move to a consolidated HQ in Cambridge Science Park. This combined both their Community Management and FunOrb office and their former headquarters. This building is more than double the size of the old HQ, and has many more perks and amenities with it than the old office, allowing Jagex to improve their benefits even more.

In 2012, Jagex opened a small office in California, with former Rockstar Games developers staffing it. They are currently working on a Facebook game called Carnage Racing, which is now out and available on Facebook or through the Carnage Racing Website.

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 had been many rumours of Jagex's next big release, and Jagex confirmed that it would be releasing a new MMORPG called MechScape. This game was planned to be released in the first quarter of the year of 2009, but it was delayed. 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 cancelled in August 2009, but Jagex confirmed, on a MechScape fan forum, that they were developing it from scratch and gave it a name change to "Stellar Dawn". On 2 March 2012, Jagex announced a pause on the development of Stellar Dawn, in order to focus on other larger projects such as Transformers Universe and the continually-evolving future of RuneScape.

Jagex also acts as the publisher of the online flash-based game called "War of Legends". It is a multiplayer real-time strategy game.

Operation
Jagex has grown heavily since the founding of the company in 2001. They currently have offices in Cambridge and London, with a small office in California. The company had been recruiting heavily in 2006 and has over 500 employees, grouped into the multiple departments across the three offices. In 2011, they recruited nearly 200 employees, and Mark Gerhard has stated that they have doubled the size of the RuneScape team in order to bring about the Evolution of Combat, multiple game engine upgrades, and "RuneScape 3".

They maintain about 140 servers for RuneScape in various locations in United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Mexico and the United States. 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.

Beyond RuneScape
While most of Jagex staff work with RuneScape, they have separate departments for each game they develop, and they still maintain many games that can be played on FunOrb, as well as several other games unrelated to FunOrb.

DeviousMUD
In 1999, Jagex created a game called "DeviousMUD", now called RuneScape. DeviousMUD was never opened to the public. DeviousMUD's subline was "DeviousMUD by Andrew Gower". Andrew Gower demonstrated DeviousMUD at RuneFest 2010.

Classic Jagex Games

 * Vertigo (A new version entitled Vertigo 2 has been released on FunOrb.)
 * Flea Circus (The original version has been taken off the Jagex site and has been replaced with a new version on FunOrb.)
 * Tetralink (Can be found on the FunOrb site as a newer version.)
 * Cyberwars
 * Warships
 * Checkers (Re-formatted to Draughts in the Burthorpe Games Room.)
 * Chess (A multiplayer version of the game can now be found on FunOrb.)
 * Reversi (Re-formatted to Runeversi in the Burthorpe Games Room.)
 * Go-Mad
 * SlimeWar or Ataxtix (Renamed to ViroGrid, can be found on FunOrb.)
 * Monkey Puzzle (Renamed to Monkey Puzzle 2, can be found on FunOrb, although the original version can still be found on the Jagex website via link manipulation, which can be found here.)
 * The Bottomless Pit was an old animation by Jagex that was listed as a game. It was a never-ending animation. It would display a series of messages, each with a delay of around five seconds at the bottom of the screen while an animation of falling into endless darkness was shown, and then, the messages would start over once they were all displayed. There was also a seamlessly looping sound of a falling noise. The Bottomless Pit is no longer available on the Jagex website, however, it can be found here. If you would watch The Bottomless Pit for long enough, you would discover that it actually tells you cheat codes for various classic Jagex games, but those who would use the cheat codes would not have their scores saved to the high scores table.
 * Outpost
 * Goldmine
 * Meltdown (Dr. Phlogiston Saves the Earth is a possible remake of this game.)
 * Meteoroids (Stellar Shard is a possible remake of this game.)

These are just some of the games. A full list can be found here.

FunOrb
In February 2008, Jagex announced that they would be releasing a casual browser-based gaming site called FunOrb within the month. FunOrb was released on 27 February 2008. It uses the same account information as RuneScape, but requires a separate membership.

The site hosts small games varying in amount of possible playtime from an hour to two days. Some of the website and games are completely free-to-play, although members receive many other benefits, such as many achievements, fullscreen mode for all games, and access to more features in nearly all games. Jagex offers a discount for those who are paying members of both RuneScape and FunOrb.

It was originally released with 18 games; the amount of games has increased to 43 over the time. However, since 16 September 2010, there wasn't a single update, besides bugfixes.

The most popular game on the site is Arcanists. Jagex has used almost exclusively the popularity of RuneScape to gain patrons for this site, with almost all FunOrb players being either current or former RuneScape players due to very little advertising.

In January 2009, Jagex released a multiplayer game called Armies of Gielinor. This is the game that is set in the RuneScape universe they promised to release. You can summon beasts such as Black knights, Greater demons, Aviansies, and other monsters from the RuneScape universe. It has become one of the most popular games on FunOrb.

On January 23rd 2013, Mark Gerhard confirmed that he has plans for a full reboot and update of FunOrb in the long term. It will include a rework of the website, updates to current games, addition of new games, and creation of even more mobile games than before. Gerhard stated that the earliest they could do this would be in 2014, as 2013 is the year that they're focusing on RuneScape 3 and Transformers Universe.

MechScape and Stellar Dawn
Rumoured during parts of 2007 and throughout 2008, MechScape is Jagex's new MMORPG, which was due for release in the first quarter of 2009. However, the MechScape project has since been dropped.

Building on the MechScape game engine, Jagex planned to release a new MMO, confirmed to be Stellar Dawn, in 2010.

Previously, if one attempted to go to Stellardawn.com, they would be redirected to FunOrb.com.

On 14 July 2010, the Stellar Dawn website was put up. On the website, users could sign up to be part of a closed beta. However, on 2 March 2012, the Stellar Dawn project was paused from further development. A Jagex moderator confirmed in January of 2013 that development of Stellar Dawn would resume in either 2014 or 2015.

Transformers Universe
Jagex and Hasbro are currently working on a Transformers MMO, called Transformers Universe. It was in development for several years, and the game was released into Open Beta in 2014. This game has received much more mainstream coverage than any of Jagex's previous games, as it is part of a major entertainment franchise. However, the game was shut down on 31 January 2015, after being announced that the game would be closing.

Carnage Racing
In 2012, Jagex announced that they had opened a small office in California, consisting of former developers from Rockstar Games. This studio is currently working on a Facebook game called "Carnage Racing", which attempts to bring console-style graphics to Facebook. It is developed using the Unity game engine, and is now available on Facebook.

Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades is a sandbox-style first-person shooter originally developed by former developers of Minecraft. The original developers decided to leave, and Jagex took over the remainder of the development. Its goal is to go against the cliches of most first-person shooters and create a unique experience. It has been in prototype phase for a year, and has already garnered more than one million players. It has been released and is available on Steam for a small, one-time fee.

iOS games
Jagex has also released several games for iOS devices. They are:


 * Bouncedown
 * Miner Disturbance
 * StarCannon
 * Undercroft

Charity Fund Raising
Since 2004, Jagex has made donations to a number of national and international charities. It has also run charity auctions for signed merchandise.

In 2008, they donated artwork and prizes to the MMOCalendar, which raises funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

In 4 years (probably 2005-2008), Jagex has donated money to charity, broken down as below.


 * Year ending 6 March - £106,000
 * Year ending 7 March - £157,000
 * Year ending 8 March - £147,000
 * Current year to date - £127,000

The charities that Jagex have donated to include:


 * Save the Children
 * CAFOD
 * Hamlin Churchill Childbirth Injuries Fund
 * Cancer Research
 * Cystic Fibrosis Trust
 * The University of Pennsylvania
 * Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign
 * Bury Bombers Wheelchair Basketball
 * SOS Children's Villages
 * East Anglican Children's Hospice (EACH)

Jagex has also taken part in the Movember charity for men, and all revenue that comes from RuneFest is donated to charity.

Further Charity has been taken in the form of conversion of in-game wealth from players donations to money, from the Well of Goodwill, donated at $1 per 1 million.

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." . However, this channel is no longer in active use as of 2013. Much of Jagex's Youtube activity now comes from their Runescape channel on Youtube, under the name "Runescape".

Jagex also has a Twitter account called Jagex, alongside a presence on Twitter from many Jagex employees, and a Facebook page.