Jagex
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.
History
Jagex Software was founded in November 1999 by Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, and Constant Tedder and became Jagex Ltd. in December 2001. The company was made in order to run their primary game, RuneScape, a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), in which players fight monsters, raise combat, train in skills such as mining, fishing, cooking, crafting, and smithing, become rich, solve quests, and so on. At the time of the company's formation, RuneScape had already been created and more than one million accounts had been created. The first tasks of the company were to create a version of the game with extra features that required a monthly fee, while still offering the free version, and to develop partnerships with advertisers. Both tasks were achieved, and the pay-to-play ("P2P") version of RuneScape was released on February 27, 2002, gaining 5,000 subscriptions in the first week. Now, RuneScape has over 3 million users, with approximately five hundred thousand pay-to-play subscribers as of November 3, 2005. In 2006, Andrew and Paul were calculated to be worth £32m[1].
Operation
Jagex has grown since the founding of the company. Jagex has two offices, one in Cambridge and one in London. The company currently has over 100 staff members, grouped into the Development Team and the Publishing Team. Individual credits may be found at the corporate site. They continue to add more "worlds" (or servers) to expand the area in which players can play. They are working on adding servers in Asia. They have many servers in various locations all over U.S.A, Toronto, Australia, Amsterdam, London, and Sweden.
Beyond RuneScape
While most of the work by Jagex staff is now towards 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
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 refocused resources on RuneScape.
The past games Jagex used to offer were:
- Tetralink
- Cyberwars
- Warships
- Checkers
- Chess
- Reversi
- Go-mad
- SlimeWars
- The Bottomless Pit (not actually a game, but meant as humorous animation)