Jagex
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jagex Software, Ltd | |
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| Type of Company | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, United Kingdom |
| Key people | Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder, Founders |
| Industry | Interactive entertainment, MMORPG |
| Products | RuneScape Classic RuneScape 2 (Current version as of 2006) |
| Employees | 302 (October, 2006) [1] |
| Website | www.jagex.com |
| Free games offered by Jagex: Meltdown, Flea Circus, Monkey Puzzle, Vertigo, Gold Mine, Fuel Critical (Stages 1, 2 & 3), and RuneScape |
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Jagex Ltd. (or Jagex Software) is a United Kingdom-based producer of Java-based online computer games. According to developer Paul Gower, Jagex stands for Java Gaming Experts. The company is best-known for its MMORPG, RuneScape.
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[edit] History
Jagex Software was founded in November 1999 by Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder.[2] The aim of this company was to create and license Java games for websites. In December 2001, the company focused on their primary game, the MMORPG RuneScape. The company then became Jagex Ltd. At the time of the company's formation, RuneScape had already been created and more than one million accounts had been registered. The first tasks of the company were to create a version of the game with extra features that required a £3.20 ($5.00 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 February 27, 2002, gaining 5,000 subscriptions in the first week. Currently, RuneScape has over 9,000,000 free players as of and approximately 850,000 pay-to-play subscribers as of July 17, 2006.[3] In 2006, founders Andrew Gower and Paul Gower were calculated to be worth £32 million ($60 million USD). Andrew Gower is also known for his varieties of java games.[4]
[edit] Operation
Jagex has grown since the founding of the company in 1999. Jagex now has two offices, one in Cambridge and one in London. The company has been recruiting heavily in 2006 and now has 302 staff members as of August 13, 2006, grouped into the Development, Publishing, Web Content, Minigame and Customer Relations teams. Jagex continues to add more "worlds" (or servers) to expand the area in which players can play, focusing on adding servers in Asia. They have many servers in various locations all over the United States, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom. On June 2 2006, Jagex added new servers into Vancouver, which gave them a total of 138 paying and free servers worldwide. On 20th November 2006, Jagex relocated six of its servers to Finland to increase the spread of European play.
[edit] Beyond RuneScape
While most of the work by Jagex staff now deals with RuneScape, they still maintain a few other games that one can play online at their website. These games are:
- Meltdown
- Vertigo
- Flea Circus
- Gold Mine
- Monkey Puzzle
- Fuel Critical Stage 1-3
These games can be accessed at Jagex.com
For a time it was stated on the Jagex Corporate site that a new MMORPG unrelated to RuneScape was in planning as far back as mid-2005, as well as a goal to gain over 1,000,000 paying members. This has since been taken down at the start of 2006, with a new goal of reaching over 900,000 subscribers and to take RuneScape into other non-English languages.
It has been confirmed by the Jagex Jobs page that Jagex are working on a new undisclosed game. Although no official information has been released about this as of yet it is said to be another RPG due to the roles described in the job.
"Your role will primarily be to build creatures, shape virtual worlds, design quests and storylines for our new, undisclosed game."
Whether or not it is to be another online game like RuneScape is yet to be known. But it is known that this new game won't affect the operation or maintenance of RuneScape in any way, as quite a few people feared it would.
[edit] List of Other Jagex games
The games listed below were removed during mid-2004 and are no longer available, though they may be back. In the meantime, Jagex has focused resources on RuneScape.
The past games Jagex used to offer were:
- Tetralink
- Cyber Wars
- Warship
- Checkers
- Chess
- Reversi
- Go-mad
- SlimeWar
- Crypt
- The Bottomless Pit, although this was not actually a game, but meant as a humorous animation. The animations showed you falling down a bottomless pit for a long period of time. It also told you some cheats after about 10 minutes because you were so patient. None of the cheats worked for RuneScape.
Many of these games such as Reversi and Checkers can now be played against other players inside RuneScape in the Burthorpe Games Room. Burthorpe is in a members-only locale, so the £3.20 ($5.00 USD) per month game membership is required.
[edit] References
- ^ Jagex Credits Credits last accessed October 17, 2006.
- ^ What is Jagex? (English). Jagex (2006). Retrieved on 09-10, 2006.
- ^ "WildTangent Explores RuneScape" - GameDaily BIZ, 17 July 2006. Retrieved 30 July 2006.
- ^ www.timesonline.co.uk - Rich List 2006, accessed 22 May 2006
