86: THE RUNESCAPE SPECIAL: How To Make An MMO That Lasts 25 Years

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1:02X has come behind the scenes to meet the team to talk with the next 25 years. Talking about Roomscape, just in case you didn't pick up on that, anyway. On today's special episode, we're at JagX HQ with James Dubrovsky, senior vice president of product to hear more about making the MMO that stood the test of time. Because when I read your title and you were coming to chat with James, that's basically using the charge of all of Roomscape products, basically. Yeah, that's great. It's got a big job, isn't it? We've got quite an elegant split between myself and Kevin, who's our COO. Essentially, I look after everything game related and in game. He looks after everything else. So the launch of the website, the platform, the game sit on, that'll sit with Kevin. I make sure the games get late. Yeah, and when it comes to a big anniversary like this, and there's so much to talk about,

2:06how do you approach that then? Because obviously you've got more eyeballs on it because people love an anniversary, don't they? But at the same token, you guys have been putting things out for years anyway. So would anything change really? Yeah, it changed a lot. In some ways, it's a bit serendipity. We were, say, I joined JagX last January. Yeah. So I've been here a year now. But throughout the early part of last year, regards the 25th anniversary that we wanted a huge year. There was a lot we've been planning for our three games. And I think it's fair to say that, even without the anniversary, 2026 is set out to be our biggest year ever as a company. 2025 is our biggest year, 2026 is going to be bigger. But because it's our 25th anniversary, we want to scream and shout even louder about all the things that we are doing. And that's both in-game and out-of-game, as you've probably seen today, we're running an extra live event in the United States for the first time ever. And our existing live events are bigger than they've ever been before.

3:08That couple of tons of other stuff is more to scream and shout about, the cool stuff, the kind of doing anyway. Yeah, it just allows to have a bit of a bigger party. And I was interested in spending the day here today and getting a bit of a sense of that roadmap for this year. So the company is, you see lots of companies in this position that have got a really successful thing. They start looking at their opportunities or new intellectual property or branching and trying stuff. But actually here's the exact opposite, right? You're kind of doubling down on, not only we make room skip, we make old school room skip, we've got the different version of it in early access. And that's what we do. Thank you very much. 100%. Yeah. So if we look back over Jagger Exist Street, I think we've done all of those things. We've taken the success of Roonscape and the company has tried new products, new platforms, new IPs, many of which have never seen the live day, some of which that have seen the live day and then fizzled out. We made the conscious decision last year that third party publishing, looking after external development of other people's IP and other products. Working on other IP at Jagger Ex

4:11was off the table. We were going to really focus down on the Roonscape franchise and the Roonscape franchise only. And there was a few reasons for that. Big one was to serve our community in the best way we possibly could. We've got a big thriving community. We were very, very closely with them. And really every time we went to do something else, we were losing focus on that core. And there's still a lot we can do with that community. There's a huge opportunity for growing the franchise, growing from the individual products, growing the community. And secondly, very interlinked is focus. As a company, we wanted to focus on doing a smaller number of things incredibly well and maximizing the quality of the things we were doing there as opposed spreading ourselves to thin and chasing a ton of different opportunities. And I suppose being able to do that, you have to have a product that people want to spend time with, want to play. And clearly, with all the records that Roonscapes broker and the motor number of players and concurrent players last year and all that stuff, clearly people want more of it. What do you put that down to? What do you put down that 25 years down to? How is

5:16it still going? Yeah, frankly, you know, in such a competitive space with so much other people vying for people's attention? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think at the heart of it, there is a kind of a game world, a universe, a franchise, an IP that is incredibly welcoming, it's incredibly timeless. But really, I think over the last few years, there's been a huge amount of, I don't use the word nostalgia, but I don't think it's nostalgia anymore, but a huge amount of desire from game communities to find a home for their game time. That is, has a very welcoming group of players they can interact with. That doesn't lean into FOMO or loss of progression, which is very, very common in a lot of other games out there, and increasingly so over recent years, especially in your genre where it's living online and you need to be, you know, so getting people just to come in and do meaningless tasks every day,

6:18that sort of stuff. Exactly. I think that's one of the reasons why our players have stuck around for a long time, even if they leave, they eventually come back and kind of re-engage with Roonscape. You never quit Roonscape, right? Just take a break. No, I think they're probably way back when Roonscape launched a few other games of our ilk. Nowadays, there are very few left that carry the same sense of community, that carry the same set of kind of, in some ways, low pressure, grind style gameplay that you can just log in, you can engage with, you can progress, and that progression is meaningful. If you disappear for two years and you come back, it's still meaningful. You can just pick up your journey and carry on. There are very few games that present a home to you like Roonscape does, but I think one of the biggest components, and it's something I've followed throughout my career. I used to work at CCP on Eve Online. I've worked on new MLOs from the ground up. The primary reason in my eyes that Roonscape has been so

7:18successful for so long is the very, very tight interaction between JagX, the developers, and the Roonscape community. I'd say more than I've ever seen any of the games company, the developers here are players, and have been players many of them since the early days of Roonscape, and there's this incredibly tight interaction on a day-to-day basis between the people that make the game and the people that play that game. You've seen that today here. You see that as always a positive because sometimes people argue that sometimes if you can't see the wood for the trees because you're too in it, you need a bit of perspective, but your argument actually, you need that passion, that passion. I don't plan to think so. It's been an interesting journey for me in this last year, where I see my job in some ways. I think this is true of JagX less as game developers in some ways, and it feels more like we are running kind of a city in some ways. This thing has exist for a long time. It will continue to exist

8:19for a long time. Our players have things they're really happy about and things that they are upset about. We will introduce things in the future that resonate or don't resonate, and we need to continue to listen to the people that play our games, understand what's taking for them, what's not taking for them, and work really closely with them to develop the community, the world that they want to exist in. I very much now see as more like caretakers of this community as opposed to game makers, and it's integral that we listen to, what our players want. JagX has been doing that for 20 plus years, and that is the primary reason why our players stick around for the long term. Is that why I'm just noticed today, and the stuff that will be coming out of the coming weeks, the wood integrity seems to be at the heart of it, when it comes to people's time, because games like yours can be a time sort of drain, I suppose, in a good or a bad way, and financially as well with monetization. Was that a big conversation I have in terms of using, because it's quite a big word, isn't

9:22integrity. It couldn't be seen as if you have to talk with that. It could be a negative thing, but it's not coming across that way. We've learned a lot, I think. A few reasons we've gone down that path. We've learned a lot both from our own mistakes, and some of the mistakes the industry as a whole is making. So, old school was in many ways birthed out of decisions made on runescape to go in a certain direction. A bunch of the player base being really uncomfortable with that direction. Old school being spun up at the time as a bit of a small side project to defeat those people satisfied, and it has become a huge game within the MMORPG space, and in some ways, a lesson for us there has been the most successful product we've ever developed, and the one that is growing quickly with our huge growth in the game last year is the one that's staying true to the tenants of 15 years ago. And runescape itself, in many ways, we feel, has lost its way as it's followed the feature design, the game design of some of our competitors

10:28as they've seen success. So, we've chased some of the things that lead to commercial success that have been successful elsewhere. Is that only things like buying stuff in the game? Exactly, I mean, you've seen today that something that's happening on Monday's removal of treasure hunter, which was the introduction of a monetization system, which has worked as incredibly successful in other types of game. And in many ways, it has been successful for us if you look purely through the financial work, just or the cash metrics. Exactly. But what we've seen over time is, as we've made more and more of those steps, the runescape community has struggled, and the old-school community that stay true to those original tenants have, say, old, more old-fashioned gameplay experience has thrived. Yeah. So, we've been increasing our time. Just making me feel old though, in 2007, is old, isn't it? But there we are. I've been playing MMORPG now since the early days of Ultimate Online and runescape. So, yeah, I'm definitely feeling like an old man in all

11:33compensators regarding Emma Lose these days. But also, when I look at our competitors, I think many of our competitors have chased similar trends to the ones we've chased. And it's led to an increasing amount of dissatisfaction with those games, with those experiences, not just within the MMORPG audience, but we now know that the MMORPG audience as a whole is shrinking. Those people are going elsewhere. I think partly because MMORPG, which used to be the safe havens that you can play for years and years, are becoming increasingly aggressive on monetization, increasingly aggressive with using your time. They do use fear of missing out mechanics. There is a case where you play a game, now you disappear for a year and you come back, you will not be able to pick up where you left off and you always need to relearn everything and get on a new progression journey. All of these things, I think, are game design loops intended to keep you hooked and make you not go anywhere else. But what we're actually seeing is that's leading to a dissatisfaction people leaving those products.

12:37And so, for the runescape franchise, a big commitment from us across all of our games is that we're not going to follow those trends. We are going to do right by our community. We are going to look at how do you monetise in an ethical way? How do you make sure progression is meaningful for the long term? How do we get away from FOMO mechanics? How do we learn a lot from what's made old school so special and apply across our other games as well? Hello, this is Stefan Back at Press X HQ just butting in for a second before we go back to our conversation with James. Just a little reminder that you can get involved in the Press X community and you can share your thoughts on whatever you hear on the podcast, including this very episode. You just join your Discord channel. You do that by finding the link. You could probably Google it or if you find this on social media, then there are links there as well. We have Press X podcast on TikTok and Press X pod on Instagram. Find us there. Comment when you see these videos go up. Also, there's a link in the discord. Find that

13:40link, get involved in the conversation. We'd love to hear from you whether you're big into runescape, whether you've played and dropped off, whether you've never played before, and actually this conversation is inspiring you to give it a go. Let us know what you think of the franchise and its future direction of travel. We would love to hear from you. So the way this worked, right, producer or when or myself spent the day at Jag X with some lovely journalists and some room to skip content creators as well who were there for the day to get a sense from the creators of the game. What's happening? What's coming in 2026? We listened to top bosses, talk us through the plans. We listened to the games developers as well. Come in and also show off what they've got coming on room scape over the next 12 months. Also, just how candid they were and have been publicly, and I think James does it a bit in our interview as well. I just have candid the team have been about what's been going right with the game but also what's been going wrong with the game and how they want to fix some of those changes, fix some of those problems maybe and sort of maximise

14:42some of the things I think is going right in the next 12 months. So it's definitely an interesting time ahead for room scape players new and old, long standing or people who are fresh into the title because it is a tricky time for MMOs isn't it? Let's not beat it on the bush. The golden days, perhaps of that genre may be behind us. So it's going to be interesting to see if these changes that are coming for room scape mean that it continues to buck the trend of MMOs and continues to keep going from strange to strange that, oh whether like the rest of the genre might fade over time, it's going to be fascinating to see what happens. Right then, that's looking gazing ahead to the future. Let's go gazing to slightly more near future, which is let's go back to our conversation with James. Interestingly there, you know, seeing about sort of listening to what fans have been telling you and this sort of change, sort of reaction to some of the other game mechanics out there. Do you think that's because, is your audience based older? Is it because it's more savvy? Because

15:43just people have grown up, things have changed. Oh, did we get it wrong? Games comes, comes, get it wrong five, six years ago, and they started introducing these mechanics. What do you put it down to? Yes, it's an interesting question and I've been surprised, when I joined Jagax, I was surprised at our demographic. I had a theory for example that the old school player base would be the older part of our audience because it's, in many ways, an older game, not true at all. The old school audience actually skews younger than the audience that play. That's so interesting, isn't it? And that was a huge surprise to me. And I think that's because the people who play, a lot of the people who started Runescape years ago have journeyed through with the existing Runescape game. Old school is starting, I think, to sing to people that, to many people who didn't play those older school MMOs. They haven't seen it before. They've played a lot of other kind of game experiences, some of our competitors, and they've played, they've churned out. There's something about it's not sticking. They're not

16:47finding that forever home for themselves. And then, as I think our popularity on things like Reddit have grown, they've stumbled across old school and found this, in many ways, kind of old school experience the hearts back years ago, but they're not playing it for nostalgia. They've never played these experiences before. They're finding something for them that's unique. I think for us longer in the two-them-of-o players, if we play old school now, it feels like we're going back in time and refining something that we used to love, something that's cozy that's been lost in more MMOs. So, from a... I've learned a lot from... and it's surprised me a lot from a who's playing our game, the demographic of those players. But I don't think it's to do with older players enjoying our game. I think we do have all the players playing our game, but it's more younger players discovering something that to them is new and refreshing. So, a couple just to finish off, James, is your plan over the next 12 months to deepen the work you're doing with the community you've played you already have to expand it to introduce new players?

17:50So, I'm going to try and do both. That's hard to do, isn't it? Is there a focus? Yeah, there is a focus. At the franchise level and on an individual product level. So, old school, we want to keep giving our fans what they love. If we look at the roadmap for 2020-26, it just contains more of the good stuff that they've been looking for for a very long time. We are including, I think, three of the most sought-after features or types of feature or within one year. Usually it's one year, we're doing three next year. So, just more of what the players want and keep listening to them about what they want in the future and continue to deliver on that. Runescape, you'll have heard a lot about this integrity plates. It's what a lot of what we've talked about today. We want to go back to our routes, refine what brought magic to that game and then regrow from there. But again, looking at our existing audience, our lapsed audience, then anybody else who wants to come along and join this journey. Dragon Wilds, I'd say,

18:51is a little bit different because it's the first time, in a long time, we've released a runescape game with that level of graphical fidelity that it's starting to. I think being an experience that could catch a lot of new players who might look at old-school and runescape and say, they look a bit dated. This could be their segue into the runescape franchise, and then I hope they propagate across the other games as well. Longer term, we are definitely looking at growth, but that growth, I think, will largely come from how do we enter new territories? How do we introduce new languages to the game? Old-school interestingly is only in English. So, there's quite a simple, big opportunity when it comes to growth. But really, focus is double down on what our community love gives them more of it, and I think our community will naturally grow as our current community continues to fall in love with what we want to do longer term. James, well, listen, my last one, just from you, it's been fascinating, Chad, you thank you very much. So, you're in charge of product, which is a, like I always said, of a status, but it's a big title. We're seeing brands and IPs like this start to reach out to other types of media. Is that something that's a conversation

19:56that you can have? I was just thinking in there, while I was listening to some of the presentations today and looking at the imagery, I was thinking, you know, arcane's done so well on Netflix, because with the League of Legends, Ty and we see so many games and movies crossing over, and TV shows is all part of the same bit, isn't it? And I wondered if that's something that is the conversation being had about those sorts of things. It's a conversation we're having constantly. It's not something we have a, a big plan around at the moment, other than it's something that we think it'd be very, very cool to explore. We would love to do something, but if we do something, we want to do it in the right way that, again, serves our community, that gives them what they want to see and what they want to love. We would love to hear ideas, thoughts, pictures, and we're still very much in that. Like, we'd love to do something. We haven't worked out what it is yet. If you've got an idea, come talk to us. Oh, there's an opportunity for someone there, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for, yeah, thank you for coming up and chatting with us. It's been a pleasure. Well, that is it for this special episode of Press X to continue. Did you like it? Did you have fun? Drop us a comment below or find us on the Discord channel,

20:59find us a social media, press XPod, press XPodcast. Comment, let us know. Do you want more of these style episodes from us? Because we can do more if you fancy it. Normal service is going to be resumed next Tuesday, by the way. But if you fancy a bit more of these indebted looks, then let us know. We can try our best to do more for you because we are here to service you the continue clubber, the XC beast. Mega thanks again to Jag X for having us down, for all bringing their doors and for being so welcoming with us. We really appreciate it. And it was lovely to see. I wish you loyal press X's could have been there to see the big smile on producer Owen's face. It's been playing room skip for years. Has he got the keys to the castle for the day? It was lovely to see. Right, we'll be back. Like I said, next Tuesday. Thank you very much for being with us. We will see you very soon. Hey, it's Cole Swindle. And when I spend 200 days a year rolling down the highway,

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