December 2005 is when I first tasted RuneScape. Oh glorious and addicting RuneScape. It drove me in like drugs, I could never ever get enough. I would login with any spare time I had; after school ( sometimes even before school ), almost all of the weekends, and just generally any moment I had where I wasn’t seriously obligated to do anything. RuneScape started to take over my life with a fury. I soon started to get more of my friends to play it and that’s all we pretty much did, at school we would talk about RuneScape at least once in most of our conversations. Subjects such as “Omfg, I lost my full set of rune yesterday” or ” I got scammed or hacked” were not all that uncommon. It’s pretty much what our lives revolved around, RuneScape.
Now this brings up the controversial question, “Is RuneScape just a game… or is it a pure addiction?”. Well there are many different scenarios and life stages but i am pretty sure we can all agree that RuneScape is mainly focused on the younger teenage or pre-adolescent group. But could this be the problem? It most certainly can be, but it wouldn’t be fair to place the blame all on one factor. After all, Runescape is supposed to be a fun friendly environment right? I think not.
The reason why RuneScape has more problems with their prayers than other games do is because of the lack of focus on a certain group. Jagex publicly states that RuneScape is focused towards people ages 13+, but does this really stop kids from playing RuneScape? Of course not. From my own experience, RuneScape is widely introduced to kids as young as the age of 8. The wide availability of the internet and children being able to have access to computers more frequently now promotes this idea as well.
Now the controversial issue about this is, Who is RuneScape really focused upon? Society pushes RuneScape amongst youngsters and even though Jagex officially states that their game is for 13+, they do not make a very valiant effort to enforce their policy. After all, their making money right? Of course they are! Children, no matter how radical their parents are, will find a way to buy membership and fulfill their lust for RuneScape.
This is why i believe Jagex is a very controversial company, they tend to focus all their energy in stopping or fixing things that affect their profits. For example, black marketing, they sure did something about that didn’t they? Of course, they needed to stop people from stealing and making money off their product. But of course, children being taught that they should get “drunk” or that they should scam others for self profit, yeah thats definitely something their going to ignore until it somehow affects their capital.
Afterall, Jagex tries to make RuneScape out to be the harmless game that condones cursing/swearing and other acts of vulgarity, but yet many aspects of their game play involve drinking, fighting and scamming for self gain. All of these aspects eventually lead up to the final question, is runescape an addiction?
Well this type of question or comment can be answered in several different ways and im sure their is no definate answer, but i believe that RuneScape is indeed designed to be addictive. It is really no mistake that most of the RuneScape player population is under the age limit, its no mistake that over the years, RuneScape has evolved from what i used to love to a game filled with lust hungry players out for self gain. Of course, Jagex didn’t “intend” for this to happend, they didn’t want to make obnoxious players from kids who grew up playing RuneScape. Of course not, none of this was intentional. Its something that is bound to happend with such a thing.
These types of issues sure don’t affect Jagex as a company, but i hope they do realize that they are ruining lives. Not to say that everyone that ever was addicted to RuneScape or played RuneScape had a messed up life, but RuneScape can ruin lives. It can force kids to kill their education to play something that they think is more important, it also creates social outcasts. Some naive children will believe that playing games will always be better than real life and will grow up thinking life is a game. It will cause a lack of functionality and will help create a barrier between the real world and the MMORPG that they have committed themselves to. Although these effects are not common amongst most RuneScape players, the fact that such a game can have such effects is disturbing, and whats even more disturbing is that a company who claims that they care for their players wont do anything about it except put up a knowledge base article saying to take “breaks”. Yeah. Bull____.
Note: I know this article wasn’t very well arranged but it does express some of the key concepts. Feel free to comment and discuss.
-Soul
Nice thoughts. Yeah I always found it confusing how Jagex makes it seem like a kid-friendly game but in the quest ‘Rum Deal’ your mission is to smuggle rum back onto the main land. Not something good to encourage kids to do.
Awesome article…
I’m Dutch, 15 years old, and I’m a girl. I’m a member in Runescape and I play it with my little brother. I’m not addicted to Runescape at all. I don’t play everyday, and when I do play, I take breaks almost every hour. I don’t play Runescape because I want to be a master in the game or anything (of course I want to be a good player and be able to do fun stuff which you are only able to at a higher level) but I play the game because when I play I have fun with my little brother (11 years old by the way,, under the age limit I know)..
But I do believe there are children who actually are addicted to runescape.. I think these things have got to stop.. so I think it’s a good thing someone finally writes the truth about Jagex/Runescape..
AWESOME article!
I’ve been playing RS for… over 4 years now. There have been times where I didn’t log on for months but there have also been times where it, like stated in the article, consumed my everyday life.
For example I remember in the summer vacation of 2006 it was pretty much all I did.
Your point though, I think, is not whether or not RS is addicting, it is rather that Jagex is controversial about their values. I think they’re just doing what any major company would do. That’s why there has been a shift in the general atmosphere of the game from “friendly, fun oriented” to “selfish and mean”. While it was still “friendly”, Jagex was barely known and they didn’t really make a lot of money, it was more of a project started by Andrew and his bro. But over the years they started to make money and the company grew. That means that they needed to hire more people and these people had to get payed. And there you have it.
As soon as there’s money involved, it is no longer just “fun”, there’s competition. And that’s why Jagex has maintain a good image by saying what they say in the Knowledge Base while not wasting time over things that wouldn’t bring them profit.
A much bigger problem is the addiction problem though. We don’t know what the real effects of MMORPG’s will be until another say 20 years pass, where it’s players will be in the real world. I wish I wouldn’t play as much RS to be honest. It’s taking me a lot of energy to get rid of it though.
Thanks for the comments :).
By the way Army Eef you seem to understand the English language very well, and you say you’re Dutch… this is interesting.
Would i be able to get in contact with you?
~11
Eh, nice artical. im american, german descent, so i play on the german server every once in a while. i agree with you, as Runescape is addciting to some, but not to others. the tip to having a life and playing RS at the same time is to hide the fact that you play it at school lol.
Very nice,
I’m off “RuneScape” now but yes, I knew the feeling
Damn good article Soul! You certainly hit the nail on the head about Jagex. I used to be madly obsessed with Runescape during my middle school years, and it probably held me from being in higher classes in high school. I hope the players on Runescape can be responsible about the time they play, and learn from people like me. Life isn’t a game guys!
- Mino (Soul’s friend)
I liked the article. I just didn’t agree with this
“This is why i believe Jagex is a very controversial company, they tend to focus all their energy in stopping or fixing things that affect their profits.”
they surely lost alot of money removing wilderness and putting a trade limit when they could leave it like it was.
lol, why did they do that? They lost money to prevent the loss of more money.
The wilderness was being used as a blackmarket ground, they wanted to prevent that so they took it out. They were losing money to begin with, thats why they took it out.
How could they be losing money with it. People were just trading.
No there were in real life money traders who were causing JaGEx massive grief. I have forgotten the exact figures that made JaGEx force their changes upon us, however, I have not forgotten that the figures were huge!
You should take a look at the older Development Diaries that explain a lot of those changes Rocof.
`11