Jagex


 * This article or section contains links to our sister sites, the FunOrb Wiki and the Jagex Wiki.

Jagex Ltd. (also known as Jagex Software) is a United Kingdom-based producer of Java-based online video games, whose name is a contracted form of Java Gaming Experts or Java Games Experts. 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 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 £3.20 ($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 ($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 can see Jagex 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 may change its name. 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.

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 300 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.

Beyond RuneScape
While most of the work by Jagex staff now deals with RuneScape, they still maintain one classic game which can be played on their corporate website and many games that can be played in FunOrb.

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.)
 * [1] CyberWars
 * [2] WarShips
 * [3] Checkers (Re-Formatted to Draughts in the Burthorpe Games Room.)
 * Chess (A multiplayer version of the game can now be found on FunOrb.)
 * [4] Reversi (Re-formatted to Runeversi in the Burthorpe Games Room.)
 * [5] 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 5 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 at  . 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, The original can be found here
 * Meltdown (Dr. Phlogiston Saves the Earth is a possible remake of this game.) Can be found here.
 * 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
A full list of FunOrb games can be found here: List of all FunOrb games

In February 2008, Jagex announced that they would be releasing a casual browser-based gaming site called FunOrb within the universe. balls balls balls-cxiiz

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.

MechScape


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.

Official Thread Discussing MechScape

DeviousMUD
In 1999 Jagex created a game called "DeviousMUD". It is now called RuneScape. This name stopped in 2001, with their first RuneScape News in 2002. The first RuneScape news was one of the most viewed news now. Many people have wanted to date back and see what it was like. RuneScape Classic is for members only and that is what it was like when DeviousMUD was out, but it was never opened to the public.