RuneScape entered development when brothers Andrew and Paul Gower wanted a game they could easily play on the computers they had access to at school. It was an extremely indie project – so small-scale, in fact, that they initially asked friends and family members, including their own mom, to help with designing the MMO’s first enemies.
“The first requirement for the game was that it needed to be quickly accessible from computers with pretty lightweight hardware and internet speeds,” as former RuneScape design director Mark Ogilvie said in an interview for the October 2014 issue of GamesTM. “The founders were frustrated that at university, they would use different computers in libraries all over campus and have to install their current favourite game from a physical disk. That process would cut into precious gaming time, so they decided to make something themselves based around their early RPG and tabletop experiences, which they could play with other people at the same time. One of the founders loved making systems and engines, the other loved making quests and designing worlds, so it all fell together rather nicely.”
Ultimately, that focus on being available to a wide variety of players who were stuck on underpowered hardware would go a long way to ensuring RuneScape’s eventual and enduring popularity. But at the time, there weren’t any ambitions of creating an MMO that would shake the industry – the Gowers were simply building a game at their parents’ home, and asking anybody they could for help.
“Everybody turned their hand to art,” explains Ogilvie. “They got a few sketches from a friend for some ideas of what a goblin or a dragon might look like; the whole family got involved – [the Gower brothers’] mum created bears, their little brother made a bat… all sorts. Only much later did they even consider actually hiring people to create assets! In the beginning it was still very much a bedroom project for fun and for them, not for an audience with expectations on quality.”
The Gowers wouldn’t form Jagex until 2001, when the game had already started to develop an audience. From there, of course, it would become one of the biggest MMORPGs of all, so entrenched in its success that even Blizzard’s World of Warcraft couldn’t scare the devs. I just hope the Gowers’ mom’s bear still lives somewhere in there.
Old School RuneScape is still one of the best MMORPGs you can play today.
