RuneScape creators asked their mom to help design the MMO's first enemies: "Only much later did they even consider actually hiring people"
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Explore An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletterRuneScape 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.
Article continues below"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."
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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.
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