Interview: Old School RuneScape's creative director on keeping the old school spirit alive - Part One
- Old School RuneScape has a seismic impact on MMORPGs as a whole
- And not just on PC, but on mobile, with its portable version also being hugely popular
- We got to chat with Kieren Charles, OSRS' creative director, about keeping the Old School spirit alive
The popularity of Old School RuneScape can't be understated, in some ways even outweighing the popularity of the mainline RuneScape itself. So, it should be no surprise we found it difficult to pin down the Old School RuneScape development team for an interview back in summer!
But, fortunately, a few months on, we've managed to put some of our most burning questions to none other than Old School RuneScape's creative director, Kieren Charles!
Kieren, can you tell us a little about your role with Old School RuneScape?So, I'm creative director of Old School, and that basically means I'm overseeing what it is we do and what our core fundamental strategy is behind our content, the way we try to do things, our philosophy, and the way we work with our players, and I'm overseeing everything the team does at the core of it. I've been a part of Old School for 11 and a half years since I joined as a member of QA.
The whole team was about 10 or 11 people back then, and so it kind of often feels quite surreal to be in the sort of role I am now, with a game that I've grown up with since I was a kid.
And speaking of RuneFest, there were some major announcements there. What do you think the biggest piece of content to launch in the time since has been?So, Hardcore Worlds came out last Wednesday, and we're absolutely thrilled with the impact that it’s had and how smoothly the launch has gone. Just seeing all of our content creators jump in. There have been so many amazing moments so far already. And thrilled with just ultimately how that's been received, and the team had to work really hard to get that over the line. So, so proud of what they were able to do.
So there are multiple factors and things to talk about with this question, honestly. And so some things we backport, and often that's stuff that, with hindsight, we still think is amazing. If we think it could be improved or it doesn't quite fit Old School from a design philosophy perspective, then it's going to need changes or tweaks, and we will absolutely do that.
Chosen Commander, which we're bringing out in early next year, is a backport of the first-ever Quest finale RuneScape ever did back in back in 2009 or so. People love that story and the character of Zanic, this cave goblin that you sort of befriend and take on a tour around Lumbridge and everything. There's no reason to mess with it. But what we do need to mess with is why you do it, the rewards, what you unlock as a matter of progression through that story, and make sure that fits the bill.
We did Blood Moon Rises in summer this year, which is our grandmaster conclusion to the Vampyre story, where you finally come face to face and fight Drakan. We did that entirely our own way. And we did that because we ultimately just had a vision of something. We thought this was this is going to be absolutely amazing, let's do it this way. This fits Old School RuneScape better and the way we want to tell the story.
And Chosen Commander was from 2009. So, it's very much already in the spirit of Old School, while the vampire finale that RuneScape did previously was much, much further in the future, much separate from the 2007 kind of era.
That is one of the core requirements of how we think about updating this game. If you're hurting that familiarity, and that's an intangible thing really you can't really pin down.
I wish I had this epic Bible I could just hand the team and say, 'this is the guide', right? But it's really not that simple. It's an intuition for, like, what's going to hurt when that changes; would players be hurt by it? Would nostalgia be hurt? Would familiarity be hurt? And then what's the spirit of the game design principles?
Design principles might shift when running an MMO for 20 years, but for Old School, we believe that those are the things that need to be retained. Old School won't ever be full of like daily stuff that you need to do every day. Temporary content that's like super FOMO oriented; we just don't do that kind of thing.
We have a real respect for the achievements and stuff the players have attained. Things we released in 2005 that predate Old School, like getting your fire cape. That is still to this day, 21 years later, a significant achievement and milestone on many player accounts.
That may have been the very end milestone back in 2005, but it's not the end milestone now; however, it's still a significant step, and that content will always be valuable. So every time we're adding something like Chosen Commander or Fractured Archive, that we just launched, we're building them in mind that they're going to be relevant for 20 years; forever, in theory
With RuneScape also being on mobile, how do you feel about how the audiences between PC and mobile interact? How do you guys approach having this portable option for fans?There's a significant overlap in how people use mobile. Like, you can imagine sort of three groups, right? You've got players who only play on an actual computer. You've got people who only play on mobile. And then you got a bunch of people who play on both. A humongous chunk sits in that category where you utilise both. And the reality is some things feel better on your PC, some things feel better can feel better on a phone.
I mentioned the raid we just launched [Fractured Archive], which is super challenging. People do do it on mobile, but it's extremely difficult to be doing that on a touchscreen where you just don't have the same level of control as keyboard and mouse control. But people can do it on mobile.
On the flip side, you have really chill content like, for example, you want to train your combat; you can go and kill the gemstone crab, and you just need to press it every five minutes while playing on mobile.
And the point is you don't even have to pay attention to it in some activities. And mobile's so great for being able to do those sort of things on-the-go. So in terms of how we think about it, it's not necessarily something we need to think about all the time. The great thing is we have the entire game on mobile, and so everything we add to the game is for both platforms.
That said, we do want the mobile experience to be better and we think there's so many things we can do to to make it to make it improved. Um, and that comes down to those core interactions. I think we could make dialogue a little bit easier to interact with; it could be a little bit easier. It's those sort of things where mobile needs attention, more than adding a new raid or a new quest.
I mean, one of the other things I found surprising at RuneFest was the reaction to OSRS. I had always assumed this was like a fun throwback for people. But it seemed many people were so excited it seemed like the ‘main’ RuneScape to them. Is that an intimidating legacy to live up to?Old School is founded on what the player wants, right? Like ultimately, it's the very nature of how we work. And so, it's scary. I do feel like we're I I see ourselves as more like we're looking after this game and making sure it's set up for a strong future and whatever happens.
And I want the version of the game that's available now to always be the best version we've ever had. And so ideally everything we do is making the game as a whole package better than it used to be. And that sounds so simple, but obviously that's easier said than done.
And we've all had experiences of games we love changing in ways that we dislike. And that was the origin of Old School: changes were happening in RuneScape, the combat system being much more deeply modernised and so on. And ultimately you had a whole bunch of people who had that sudden feeling of 'I wish we had back what we used to have from that 2007 version'.
People reference 2006-2007 as like the original sort of golden era of RuneScape; people were picking it up on a browser because it was playable on a school library computer. So people have that appetite for that era, which we need to look after. Like I've inherited it myself, and so many people on the team grew up playing this game; so we kind of just get it in a similar way.
But we don't do anything without players telling us they want it. We can't add the new raid to the game or Menaphos next year without players saying yes on a vote.
That's a difficult process to go through, and we have to basically sell players on it. Why do we want to do this? What problems is it going to solve? Why should you be excited? And then players hopefully vote yes. But if people vote no, we can't do it. That would break our principles of how we work. So in some ways it takes a little bit of the pressure off. If we get it wrong, we find out tomorrow; we don't find out when we've launched it.
And I'd much rather find out at a poll and be disappointed that we're not moving forward than launch something that feels like it's damaged the game in players' eyes. And so with RuneScape and Old School, to me, they coexist nicely. There's some overlap. People want different things. Some people want the modern combat system, which is much more ability-driven. Some people want the laid-back Old School one where a lot of stuff is click and wait. And the best thing is you get to offer two RuneScapes to the world and now a third with Dragonwilds!
This interview ended up being so long that we've actually split it into multiple parts! So, watch this space, and once part two of our interview with Old School RuneScape's creative director Kieren Charles is up, we'll link it through here!
In the meantime, if you want to see what other mobile MMORPGs are making waves, why not check out our list of the best mobile games like World of Warcraft to see some of our choice picks?
