Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Hello everyone,
We are Mod Mac and Mod MarkG and we work at Jagex Games Studio. We are the Product Manager and Community Manager for Planetarion. Over the last few weeks we have been working with the PA team and have been drawing up plans for how best to take Planetarion forward. We’ve been spending a good deal of time familiarising ourselves with the game.

Firstly, a little bit about us as a company for those that may not already know who we are and what we do. Jagex is the UK’s largest independent games developer-publisher and we are best known for producing browser-based games. This year, we have also branched out into third-party publishing and mobile games.

It’s really clear to us how passionate the community is about Planetarion and this is great to see. The PA team have been doing a fantastic job keeping very thing together over the past months and we value all of their effort and advice.

We plan to be in constant communication with the PA team and we will be providing you with more information as soon as we’re able. We’ll be learning the ropes of your IRC system over the next week or so and will hopefully be able to chat with you all much more in coming weeks.

Thank you for your questions in advance and we wish you all good luck for Round 38!

Questions from the community

Why did Jagex buy the game?
We purchased Planetarion because it is a great game.
Many members of staff here play and really enjoy the game, and as you probably already know, that’s how we came to find out about Planetarion in the first place - through a member of staff who told us what a great game Planetarion was.

Will Planetarion be up as a game on Jagex's website soon as this will attract a lot more people?

How will Jagex integrate Planetarion into its existing site and portal, and will there be cross-game advertising?
When is this game moving to the new servers?

We think it’s best to answer these ones together. We definitely want to grow player numbers but it is vitally important that we ensure the gaming experience for new players is fun as much as it fits with the current community.
The full plan for how Planetarion will be integrated with our current portal has not been decided.
We are in the process of moving servers now and it is hoped this will be completed soon.
We will let you all know when this has been completed.

Will the prices/payment of this game be changed?
We will be looking to offer additional payment options for players to give everyone more opportunity and flexibility to buy credits if they wish to. Please keep an eye on the main page for the latest news on pricing and payment choices.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Official responses:

<Phil^> with the game being moved to american servers, will the game clock change to american time or remain at gmt
Planetarion’s game clock will remain on GMT; we do not have any desire to change this.

<Reincarnate> what is jagex main priority? Too improve Planetarion as it is or to create the sequel?
Our primary focus now is to see how we can improve Planetarion in its current incarnation.

<Reincarnate> has jagex bought PA to remove the competition? as i notice that their own game was Stellar Dawn was launched very recently.
No, that’s definitely not our intention. Stellar Dawn hasn’t been released yet, but I can assure you that it is a very different game to Planetarion and we believe that we can very comfortably accommodate both games within our catalogue and attract new players to both.

<Reincarnate> Will there be official Jagex representative for PA? and will we be able to bring our issues to jagex directly?
Yes and yes! Initially Mod Mac (me) and Mod MarkG will be working with the PA team to decide how best to move the game forward. More Jagex staff will be introduced to the Planetarion community as and when they are assigned. At this time, all issues should be still passed to the PA team who will contact us.

<Kargool> as many people is wondering about how Jagex will run the game from now on, have you been able to establish a timeline for what you intend to do with the game in the future?
<Reincarnate> will jagex be looking into taking over Netgamers IRC? or having their own? as netgamers need development as well/
<Phil^> How will jagex contribute to netgamers in future, considering that planetarion is a partner of it. Will more games be given official channels on it?
We are working with the PA team now to finalise a timeline for any changes (including IRC usage) immediately following the server move. We will let you know as soon as this is agreed.

<Kargool> As many of the PA forum moderators are either idle or non active, will you be looking at getting new forum moderators?
<Kargool> With the hostility many people feel towards the PA forums and the mass off trolling going on there, will there be made plans to change the forums and enforce stricter moderation on the forums?
Once our plans are in place, Mod MarkG will become more actively involved with the community and will help decide how we will use the current PA forums.

<Reincarnate> has there been an actually budget set for Planetarion development? Will planetarion stay the same code based as it is now or wil it go to java like many of the new owners games?
We have a budget we can tap into for Planetarion; the key thing for us next is to work out how we should spend it. There are no plans to move to Java.

<Phil^> what is jagex's opinion on the current planetarion rules ( eula, etc ), are they going to leave them as-is or adjust to bring them more or less into line with the rules and punishments of their other games as well where possible
We don’t have any current plans for changing the Planetarion game rules.

<Reincarnate> can we expect Jagex to do some for of advertising PA? whether that is in their current games or elsewhere?
As far as advertising and attracting new players is concerned: yes, we are definitely planning to introduce new players to the game in the future, although we need to be mindful of how this will affect the current game and community as well as how new players will integrate.


<m0rph3us> could we have in future...a comment from pa crew/jagex about suggestions on the suggestion forum, such like "no **** off" "sounds cool, we are thinking of it" "will be implemented shortly"
We are keen to collect all suggestions however big or small. At this time please post on the suggestions forum and we will be avidly reading through all of them.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Well, seems like it's just another owner of little worth.

PA's downfall started as soon as the original team (Spinner etc) sold out. Hell, it was in its death throes then.

I'd love nothing more than to see a return of the great days of PA from back at the turn of the century, but lets face it, regardless of ownership that'll never happen...

Just rats on a ship...

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Really Skiddy? I'm a pretty skeptical person, but I'm fairly encouraged to see this post. Jagex is a real company, not some sweaty penis-wrinkle like zPeti.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Yeah, and two months after the acquisition, PA still isn't on their homepage as one of their games.

So... you just bought the rights and the source to a game, which you're now going to market and attempt to make money from, but you're in no way excited to get this out onto your homepage and make a big deal out of it.

Face it, they're as ashamed of PA as everyone else is. They bought a cheap and failing game. They'll slowly integrate it into their ecosystem, keep things going as they are, hope players migrate, take code snippets or features or ideas...

The only way PA will ever be an appealing game is if the folks of old came along and put their passion and love into it, in an attempt to make it what it once was. Jagex has no idea of what it once was. They weren't around playing it.

They say many staff members play and enjoy the game, but yet they're busy familiarizing themselves with it still. Ok, so how many of those staff members were around in the PA glory days of <R10 when the might of Legion and Fury and Elysium were destroying worlds for power?

Give that guy project lead and let him run it. He remembers. But no, they've started playing when you started looking to buy the game and yeah, they enjoy what it is now, which is a shadow of it's former self.

PA will die. It'll die because it's commercialized. I don't care about paying for it, but I'd only pay if it was what it once was. Things change all the time, but PA never changed for the better. It went from great to... this.

PA, very simply, needs love and passion. It needs the personality back into it. 50% of what made the whole gaming experience great was the late nights in #forums, the late nights in #cnuts, the late nights on the PA forums - particularly GD. None of that exists anymore. This is likely because all us who roamed then have grown up and have families / jobs / lives, but shit, I still come here every day hoping to see a spark of life on GD.

How do we fix PA? We don't. Not until someone gets people who actually loved PA and are passionate about getting PA back to what it was (which, I note, will never happen). People who saw it more as some cash cow to milk with little development and a part time team. People who saw it as a community that they could fit into online and had a place to hang out whilst playing the game.

There's the solution.

Get the community back, get rid of that corporate feel, get rid of the whole "ooh I'm a community manager" jackassery and make PA feel like it belongs to the players again. Don't just turn up on the forums and make announcements. For ****s sake, don't make announcements via Appoc - at least make your own accounts. Join in with the community. Do a search and find Spinner and Oreo posts from back in the day under General Discussions - see how they were just guys on the forums? Yeah. You won't be - shit, I'll probably be banned for speaking out like this. Back then I'd have likely got a private message from one of them asking if things were cool and letting me know they took shit seriously.

But no one will, as no one will read this, and even if they do they'll just be like "well, who the **** is skiddy anyway?"

Whatever.

[/rant]

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

A quick response (kinda busy at work)

Jagex is a reasonably big company, with 400+ people. If anything, we really announced the sale far too soon, but we had to migrate the servers and so we decided to let you know that we'd been purchased. When this was announced, the CEO had literally just signed with Pete. I doubt there were more than 5 people in Jagex who knew that they'd just purchased Planetarion.

They got a few people together to start looking at the game. The first priority was to get Planetarion moved onto their new servers, which has been successfully completed*.

They then had to make a business plan and submit it for approval to gain additional personel as required. This isn't regarding game mechanics as much as identifying key areas of the game that need improving before they have millions of people linked to it. I'm sure you can guess many of the areas (e.g. new user support). They aren't willing to fully integrate the game until they're sure that, if 50,000 players sign up in 3-4 days, the game can handle it and the support is there to handle the players. This won't be in place until sometime next year.

These processes have all been going on over the couple of months. More and more key people are in place and starting to work, though it won't be on Round 39. Round 40/41 will have more changes from Jagex, and by the middle of next year we should be looking at integrating Planetarion with the Jagex portal.

This is partly my fault, as I've emphasised in the past that owners have come in promising everything and delivering nothing. They're not promising anything; they'd prefer to let their delivery do the talking. I think they'd not prefer to say "ok, we're doing this" and then have to backtrack at a later date. They want to plan twice, announce once, or whatever. :)
However, I know that the majority of those involved from the Jagex point of view read the forums.

I will try and ask for more of a visible presence from their side over this round; they're not used to being quite so close to the community.

The up side of Jagex owning us is that when they get started, things will happen and there will be a lot of stability and things will be done properly. The down side is that things do take a lot more time as there isn't just a small team of people doing everything.



*The new hardware is far superior. Ticks have never been so fast - the longest tick last round post migration was under 20 seconds. If you include the havoc ticks that ran the same time as a complete game backup, it was still under 30 seconds. that's probably 1/10th of what they were in the past.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Ok guys,
We will look to get an official comment and more official input next week.
Please stop this as it's going to cause more problems than it's going to solve.

Thanks

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

We look forward to that comment.... Jagex please don't disappoint us.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Really? You deleted all of those posts? That's pretty shit.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

The problem is that they're not showing any active involvement, Richard. A one-off statement (while certainly a step up) is still far short of where we'd like them to be.

Also, **** you for deleting my post(s).

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

As you deleted my responces, i'll retype them.

It does not matter how big JageX is. Planetarion has been given a 'Community Manager', it is irrelevent that JageX has 400+ people when we have one person dedicated to the Planetarion community. Now, what were all asking is that its been over 6months since MarkG got appointed as community manager and he's done absolutly nothing, so when is this going to be fixed?

Planetarion isnt even on JageX's website. Theres been no effort put in that we can see other than moving the servers which they had to do.

The reality is, JageX are on a strict deadline and you should of informed them of this. If Planetarion does not show improvement in the next 6months, then the game is in serious risk of losing its community when Spinners new game comes out. The top alliances in Planetarion will give the new game a go, which in turn will get the medium/smaller alliances to seriously think about trying the game.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Right on the nose there

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Seriously you deleted all those posts? So much for freedom of speech.
I was just in the process of creating a new mail for them!

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Ok Appoco,

Message recieved, there will be no further guerilla tactics on my part. Though as someone who has been with the community since the beginning (although sporadically) I do hope that they take us seriously. After all its the community within the game that really counts and what keeps us coming back even after absences.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I would like to point out one thing that I think most of the posters have missed. While Jagex has certainly been more distant than many would like, unlike the previous owners they haven't made a ton of promises that they haven't kept. So while they are distant, at least they don't appear to be lying to us, which is an improvement in my opinion.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

lol wtf? lying at least means they're communicating so they at least slightly care about the community. Blatently ignoring the community for 6months while also lying about giving us 2 members of staff is ALOT worse.

Lets just face reality here, JageX arnt doing anything.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Yeah because lying means they care.. Just being Anti FTW, right?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Any update on this? i know you didn't promise anything but was wondering if it was going to happen at all

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Must be pretty shit for the PATeam as well, and on top of that they have to tackle the shitstorm from the community. Just saying.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Apologies for lack of update.
Most/ all of the e-mails sent have apparently been replied to. We're trying to get a more complete / general input and maybe someone from Jagex to be more visible and contactable. The PA Team have recently been discussing a few shorter term options with Jagex in addition to medium/long term options that are still being pursued by Jagex.

I will try and speak with less bullshit when we're actually confident of definite plans and deadlines. :)

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Can anyone confirm that they got an email back?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Dark did...

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I didn't. :/

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I did, here is the post:

http://pastebin.com/pEHSdkm2

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I like how they all have "Mod" as title. I suppose not having any Frenchmen here meant we kept the royalty.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I must admit I am bit disappointed to see nothing has improved for Planetarion in the past 6 months. I would at least have expected a firm plan from the new owners, a little marketing-effort to at least do a little something to increase the number of players, a completed integration into their portal and some kind of visual change to indicate that resources are being applied towards the game. 1 decent web-coder like myself (ok, enough with the bragging, my strength might not be in coding but rather getting things done) could easily have done marvels in 6 months if dedicated time was allocated. Apply a GFX-artist in the last 4 months, and things could really have been stepped up in that department also.

Here's to hoping my words will be put to shame shortly :)
Meanwhile I will try to finish up my new game some time before, oh 2461. ;)

We're all cheering for you Jagex, just don't let us down!

- Spinner

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

More bullshit please, better than nothing.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I did indeed and a very nice e-mail it was too. Jagex do have a sense of humour :D

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Been afew weeks, whats the update on this?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Well what was it?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Total agree it is sad to see no dev or markting been done in months.
If helps I would even commit some of my time to do some marketing if it helps the community stay alive.

Better still, How much you think they would sell Planetarion I might be looking for a new investment? ;)

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Announcements been made for next round, no JageX coming to Eorc or even any mention of them.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Would imagine somewhere around £15k.
They do not seem to like PA much, but it is a nice addition to their overall portfolio. And it does create more awareness around Jagex as a company (for better or worse). Historically PA was a very successful game as far as getting players in and therefor the value might be set a bit overpriced.
Also; the cost of having PA on their books is very low considering the cost of running the game vs the amount of new dev being put into the game. If they also do some ads in-game (which I do not remember if they do or not) they might actually clear a few thousand for each round.
Personally I would not pay more than £5k, but they are greedy and probably bought (like all previous owners who got duped) PA at a very inflated cost...with a lot of promises of how "great" it is, not to mention the promise of how little needs to be done to bring it back to "greatness".

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

For crying out loud....

The game has virtually no value in itself without the name / domain.
According to some of the sane modern methods to measure the worth of a domain, the domain is worth about 1500 Euros or thereabout. (Based on traffic, pagerank, links in, estimated annual advertisement-revenue etc)
Add some 1000 active players, and the value jumps to around 6.500 Euros.

The value of the game is kind of 0, kind of not, and kind of negative.
If the value of the name / players etc are to be "realized" at some point, the game will require serious investment in terms of development.

I do not think anyone can expect to buy it and make a financial profit, when you factor in the running costs (every hour counts).
The only exception I can see is of course to join the previous owners strategy, buy it cheap, get as many credits sold as possible in about a year without dedicating resources towards it, and then try to sell it again...With a little luck, there are a few bucks to be made this way. But the value and players drop for every time it is bought and sold...

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

15 K is a fun price though, as it is exactly what Jolt bought it for back in the days....Ofc, the game had, what, 15 times as many players?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I do have a dreadful feeling I am the only one who has actually lost money on PA (-:

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I want to buy back Spinner. F*ck the game, I want to buy Spinner.

Cost plz?

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Spinner: I do believe you know this part of PA far better than myself :)

But I do believe (guessing) that the game has been sold at an overprice from very early on, and those who has bought it probably just want to get their money back...and hopefully a small profit.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

It seems to me that PA's success is very much connected to the age in which it was developed. It would not have been imaginable 10 years (probably even 5 years) earlier, and we can see that it has only barely kept itself afloat during the last 5 years, and that's a generous assessment. The community and its desire to keep playing a PA-like game, a lack of alternatives for a real-time MMOStrategyG (Eve being the only exception I can think of), the (financially) low cost of playing and the even lower cost of maintenance are the things that have kept PA alive, if we can call it that.

If someone were to start a PA clone now, using not only similar game mechanics, but the general feel of the game (though not necessarily the exact same design), it would fail spectacularly. Even the clones that were started during PA's heydays are all but dead now, and they had a head start because they had a large community to draw players from.

I'm inclined to agree with Spinner that the only monetary value in PA is the name and domain. I would add that it is also the name and the domain, but especially the community that uses it as home base that are holding it back from reaching its potential. Let me explain.

Every single person playing PA now is playing it because they enjoyed the feel of the original. Even the experiences of the people who never played the game before PAX (me, for example) are profoundly affected by how the community shaped itself during those early days. The echoes of that time are still reverberating throughout PA, not in the last because many of the most influential people in the community today are remnants of that time.

The effect of that kind of age in the community is that change is almost universally regarded as dangerous, and not entirely unreasonably so. Making major changes to a 10 year old game that can barely sustain itself could be the straw that breaks the camel's back: if the active core of the community were to leave before new growth has begun, the game is at serious risk of collapsing on itself.

In that light, it seems reasonable to assert that almost none of the players cares about what will happen to the game Planetarion but for one reason: we worry about having a place to play. Currently, there is no alternative to PA, so we try en masse to keep it as faithful to the original as possible, lest the changes that are introduced will lead to its destruction, stranding us in a world without a game to play: unimaginable.

There is not only a resistance to the few changes that are suggested, but also a distinct lack of imagination of what PA could become. We are so stuck in 10 years of history, that we simply can't come up with major changes. This is especially apparent in the players who are most inclined to think of themselves as progressive. Paradoxically, these are in fact some of the most traditional, always excessively worrying about how a change could negatively affect PA. Just about all of the changes supported by this group are in fact calls to return to the golden age of PA: reintroducing multiing, allowing farms, removing tag limits... the list goes on.

This resistance to change, coupled with a lack of ability of creative thought (more common in the traditionalists) encourages making only small changes, because the fallout and risk is likely to be more manageable: if it turns out not to work, everyone can imagine discarding the change the very next round. Choosing between single or multi targetting, disallowing inter-alliance defense, removing cluster defense eta bonus, raising or lowering tag limits by 20, even changing the ship stats every round: all of these are virtually risk-free changes. Being risk-free, however, also means they are almost guaranteed to have no effects worth mentioning. Good lightning rods, though.

As long as the Powers That Be feel constrained or even affected by the people who currently play PA, PA not only won't, but can't be improved. It is all too easy to turn around and blame the demise of the game on Appoco, on Cin, on Jagex, on whoever: the truth is that we, the people, are to blame: it's better to muddle along, keep what we have, than to risk losing it all.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Wow!
That was well written, to the point and very clearsighted!
I can not hope to match your skills in writing, and much less the English language, but I am brave enough to make a fool out of myself by replying anyway :-P

I can certainly agree , or understand your reasoning behind, many of the things that you write. However, I do have a problem agreeing to your main point; That the customers are responsible for the lack of development...
Yes, I can understand that there are forces in the community that has that effect NOW, after such a looooong time with disappointments, untruths, forgotten promises and lack of action and leadership...But what can you expect in a hopelessly mis-managed community? No, that wasn't a kick to anyone but the list of previous owners, but no matter how I can twist and turn to look at this, it always falls back on whoever owns it.
Planetarion SHOULD have been taken to a new level by Jolt. They had the means, but not the stones, so to speak. In stead, I believe Jolt ripped us all off. From that point on, no new owner has been able to "refurbish" the game, and the tiny steps of modernization it has seen, has mostly been too little too late.
I am all for open-source alternatives, community-driven content and the likes, but a game like this requires dedicated full-time personnel. And, just as important, it requires a vision with the decision-maker(s). One ring to bind them all, and all that.
The fact that PA has even had corporate owners for the past 5 years is hard to believe...Horribly outdated business-model, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha payment-methods, a public frontpage that shouts "home-made", and 5 year old typos!

My point is, the game, name, domain, site and community, have all been mis-managed for a long time. And in that light, I'd be hard pressed to blame the loyal customers for the lack of progress.....That's my view anyway...

Then again, wtf do I know about anything, I've hardly been here the past 5 years :)

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I think some of the more experienced players genuinely want serious change to the game. I certainly do, at least. There's no point carrying on with the game as it is. Every way of possibly winning has been explored, pretty much and we've seen so many fantastic achievements that I'm not sure they can ever be topped.

What is needed for someone to start from scratch to create a new game that would be different, but that the new playerbase might like, or might not like while most importantly having universal appeal. As Spinner says, we have lacked owners with the real balls to take the game to its full potential and for someone to have a vision, consult, make their own decision and go with it whatever.

I've been on the winning side too many times to remember and played at every level and there's just no interest in being motivated to play. Being motivated to play and having a planet are two different things for me, you understand. Fact is you'll never have a good game of planetarion without the players and for that, the game has to change, radically. In fact I'd probably say you need at least 30,000 players to have a game worth playing.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I concur with Spinner, the state of the game is only the fault of the player base in that we've continued to pay to play the game and thereby kept the game in existence.
PA has continually suffered from a lack of leadership and vision, not from the players, but the various owners. How easily these things could be fixed... yet for whatever reasons this has never happened. Sad really.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

hmmm ok, i´ll bite

6 months later


Have there been any new dev. ? (-;


from what i read on the forums/home page not alot :/

Creators Hour 05/08/2010 posted at 21:07 GMT on Thursday 5th August 2010 by Appocomaste (ayear ago)
19:42 GMT on Thursday 8th July 2010 by Appocomaster BLOG( a year ago)
Last updated: Wednesday 4th August 2010 User agrement (a year ago)
Development Blog. 19:42 GMT on Thursday 8th July 2010 ( over a year ago)
EoRC. got news ........


come on PA looks dead now...

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

well theres still some 500ish planets playing :D

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

500ish real players...... thats just sad :-)

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

I posted the above one year ago.
Any good news, plans or activities?

- Spinner

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

lol

umm they took pl down to +2 for attacks and +6 for defence - and not even 1k ppl signed up this round.

Oh and were still waiting for any Jagex news... i think most people have to the realisation that there another one of 'those' owners.

If pl rule stays we should be down to 500 players by summer... fingers crossed eh ;)

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

loving that 'soon to be' games screenshots btw spinner - it looks rather 'pimp'

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

Best not to discuss that here.

Re: Jagex Introduction / Q&A
 

pa needs integrating with facebook, and to go back to basics. The game was only ever any fun because of the simplicity and how 200 could destroy so many. Get PA back to basics with simple fu n and people will come back.