This Persistent Life #4

How willing would RuneScape's player base be to being subjected to in-game advertising? What does the future hold for advertising in these sorts of the games in the West?

We currently don't do in-game advertising and have no plans to add it in the future. The challenge is that RuneScape is set in a fantasy world of Gielinor, so if you put billboards up with modern day products it is going to look completely out of place and would impact the gaming experience. In the context of RuneScape it doesn't really work.

Will RuneScape continue to be Jagex's primary focus in the near future?

Yes, RuneScape sits at the heart of Jagex and we will continue to improve it, continue with weekly updates, and it will be fully supported going forward. Recently we added a German version of the game in beta, offering the same rich features and depth of game play as the English Language version. We expect to add other languages in the future to extend the reach of RuneScape across the world. We do have other games in development but we are very aware that we shouldn't lose our focus on advancing and growing RuneScape.

Do you believe that there will ever be any sort of convergence between games like RuneScape and major game consoles? What about services like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network?

We have already seen some MMORPG's released for consoles. I think there are a few barriers, particularly as it relates to input mechanisms that make it difficult to produce this kind of game on the console as well as it can be done on the PC. But now most consoles have internet out of the box it makes it a more realistic possibility. We are not currently planning on doing a console version of RuneScape in the immediate future but it is something that we are watching and when the time is right we might move in that direction.

Most MMORPGs would have a very hard time running on Xbox Live Arcade because, I believe, that there is a certain maximum download size for games on that service (to support users with no hard drive). The average MMORPGs are way bigger than that size. RuneScape on the other hand, is one of the games that would work well with Xbox Live Arcade because of our proprietary compression technology. When we developed the game we really focused on streamlining it so that it downloads quickly, even on smaller bandwidth networks, without compromising on the quality of the graphics and the game play.

What is Jagex's place in the growing MMO market? Will the company always focus on games like RuneScape?

We don't want to be a one product company so we are looking at expanding our portfolio. We are going to be sticking with online formats because over the years we have built up a huge expertise and proprietary technologies in the online sector and we feel that we know it very well and it offers us a strong competitive advantage. We plan to stick to what we are good at--online games. Of course there is a whole range of things that we can do online, not just MMORPGs. I think ultimately if you look at the trends online distribution is the way things will increasingly go.

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