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Jon Bellamy, newly appointed CEO of Jagex, wants the company's flagship game RuneScape, in all its forms, to collectively become either the biggest or "clearly the second-biggest MMO franchise in the Western world" within about five years.
Local business executive wants product to succeed – a shocker, I know. But Bellamy's reasoning and planning is what jumps out to me. Speaking to The Game Business, Bellamy stresses that despite the recent and highly successful launch of survival game RuneScape: Dragonwilds, as well as the company's role as publisher in several other games over the past few years, Jagex is laser-focused on restoring embattled MMO RuneScape 3 to greatness and maintaining the momentum that its flagship MMO Old School RuneScape has gained this year especially.
"For Jagex, the priority is, and will be for the foreseeable future, RuneScape in its various incarnations," Bellamy says. "I'm a big believer in strengthening your strengths rather than sort of strengthening what you might feel to be weaknesses. The French make wine and the Germans make cars and Jagex makes RuneScape, and that's exactly where I would like us to be for the next five-or-so years."
Spelling it out even more plainly, but stopping just short of calling out World of Warcraft, comfortably the granddaddy of all MMOs, by name, Bellamy adds: "I would like Old School RuneScape, RuneScape 3, and Dragonwilds as a collective RuneScape franchise to be, if not the biggest, then clearly the second biggest MMO franchise in the Western world."
Old School RuneScape hit a record 240,000 concurrent players earlier this year, making it roughly eight times bigger than RuneScape 3. Bellamy hopes to reduce the gap there and restore the integrity of the non-retro RuneScape by focusing on game integrity and undoing the microtransaction infestation that has defined and saddled the game for years.
He maintains that such microtransactions will never come to Old School RuneScape, and stresses that even if revenue dips as a result of RuneScape 3 microtransaction changes, it will be worth "some short-term pain" if it means sustaining a healthier game for years to come.
Bellamy says "we're already very close to that" second-place MMO position, hinting at a fairly common reaction when people learn just how many people are playing Old School RuneScape.
"It's one of those things that surprises people quite frequently," he says. He cites an unspecified research tool that measures "mindshare" across YouTube, Google searches, and other internet discussions, and says a recent search showed "Old School RuneScape has the greatest mindshare of any MMO in the West, which I found surprising and I think many others would as well."
This is pretty soft as data goes, but there is something to be said for the growth of Old School RuneScape. "I think we've established where we want to be, we're already pushing towards it, and the growth, at least for Old School RuneScape over the last few months, has been amazing," Bellamy continues.
"So I think if we can continue that as we are, we don't plan on doing big acquisitions necessarily or spinning up large-scale new projects. Really, the focus is doing what we already do quite well, but making 1, 2, 3% improvements across a hundred different places every year for the next five years."
