TheGameNarrative

TGN: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

MS: I was born in the west Midlands of England, and grew up in (Kwazulu-)Natal, South Africa when my parents emigrated (I was three, so I wasn’t consulted on the matter).
After I finished my university honours degree (majoring in computing and English), I moved back to England and continued my career here.

TGN: What games did you enjoy in your childhood?

MS: Initially, anything in reach, on platforms from various home computers to arcade cabinets (Golden Axe ate a lot of my pocket money in the ’90s!) to consoles.
As the technology evolved and genres arose, my fascination with interactive storytelling flourished in adventuring gaming, particularly the works of Sierra and LucasArts/Lucasfilm, then later shifted into roleplaying games. The Quest for Glory series is one of my favourites of all time.

My engineer father was an early adopter of microcomputer hobby kits, so my first gaming experiences in the early 1980s were the likes of Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg and Horace Goes Skiing, loaded from cassette tapes on an 8-bit Spectrum.

We started with a 48kb ZX-81 then upgraded to a 128kb Spectrum including a Microdrive cartridge loader. While still prone to frequent sudden crashes in a world long before save states, the revelry of instantly loading a game from a ROM cartridge, skipping 5 minutes of horizontal load lines and digital screeching felt like techno-sorcery.

My first exposure to computer programming was typing out hundreds of lines of BASIC from type-in listings in Your Sinclair magazine. It was more transcription than a creative exercise, but persevere and make no mistakes, and it’d compile into a playable game. The notion that I could create interactive entertainment with my own hands, that I could make manifest my imagination in this digital world, was so compelling, and that’s where it all began.

It’s wild to have come full circle and now be working as a game developer in the same city Sir Clive Sinclair’s technology brought accessible home computing to the masses.

I also distinctly remember a game my father wrote in Sinclair BASIC that was functionally equation Hangman, to help 7-year-old Stu memorise arithmetic tables. Every wrong answer buried this powerless pixel person a little deeper in a blocky coffin, until he was entirely entombed and suffocated. My father’s well-meaning homicide simulator included an ever-narrowing time limit with no win state. So I could at best postpone (but in no way avert) my cocooned companion’s inevitable demise. The prospect of straight up murdering a dude with my limited mastery of numbers instilled in me a profound and enduring mathematical anxiety. Yet 15 years ahead of the term ‘gamification’, my father intuitively understood its principles… if not necessarily the (pun intended) execution.

After the Spectrum, we went the Commodore route with an Amiga 500. Some games I distinctly remember are Lemmings, Shadow of the Beast, Future Wars, Moonstone and Dungeon Master. (Those mummies!) And adjacently into PC gaming, where I devoured too many enjoyable games to list here!

Due to that early exposure to home computing, I didn’t dabble in console gaming until I was in my mid-teens. I remember my father was utterly perplexed in the mid-90s when my school friends were entranced by Nintendo and Sega consoles, and couldn’t understand why I’d want to go back to an 8-bit system when we’d long evolved beyond the Spectrum’s microprocessor.

TGN: When did you first have the idea of entering the game industry?

MS: It wasn’t so much an idea as a necessity. I have the kind of brain that gets passionately fixated on certain interests and has a hard time focusing on anything else. So the optimal route to efficient productivity is to feed the passion beast, and hopefully pay some bills as a side-effect.

I figured out early on that you spend a third of your life at work, so it’s crucial to do what you love.

I was a kid who spent a lot of time in his head – writing stories, reading stories, conjuring worlds of imagination, and gradually I figured out the tools and fell into the places where I could create those worlds in virtual spaces.

I didn’t know how I was going to get there, but there were certain school subjects that profoundly captured my interest – creative writing and programming – that satisfied that need to create worlds. I enjoyed doing them and I enjoyed learning about them. So when high school reached its conclusion, I was fortunate enough to be able to continue learning about them.

I pursued a humanities degree because it structurally provided the flexibility to multiclass – major in both a science and an art discipline. By feeding the wolf in my logic brain and the wolf in my linguistic brain, I hoped it would eventually take me somewhere they’d work in harmony, or at least not devour each other.

Much to my surprise, that worked.

TGN: What was your first job in games?

MS: This one!

TGN: When did you start working for Jagex and what was your role in the company when first hired?

MS: I started in 2006 as a junior content developer on Mechscape, a sci-fi vehicular MMORPG, and sister product to RuneScape’s fantasy MMORPG. A few years later, when approaching alpha, Mechscape renamed to Stellar Dawn.

At the time, Andrew Gower, our founder and lead programmer, was in the late stages of de-hardcoding various aspects of RuneScape’s RuneTek engine to support parallel products, like Mechscape, using RuneScape’s engine architecture, client renderer and scripting language.

In 2006 we were on RuneTek 3 (at time of writing we’re on RuneTek 7). So the game client was an exclusively software-rendered Java applet, rendered in a browser window for ease of access. This was prior to 2008’s RuneScape High Detail’s resizable and full-screen modes, so you had the 3D world view in the top-left corner of the game window, and the remainder (mostly 2D) top-level interface components (minimap, chat window, backpack, etc).

At that stage in its development (we branched the engine for some bespoke features further down the line), Mechscape was functionally a total conversion mod of RuneScape. Same engine and core architecture, but replacing all of RuneScape’s content with a distinct set of new content.
And so Jagex hired additional staff like me to design and implement that content, using the same content creation tools used by RuneScape’s developers.

TGN: Did you play RuneScape before working on the game as your job?

MS: To be honest, in 2006 when the recruitment agency made me aware of the Mechscape role, I had never heard of RuneScape or Jagex!

There’s a few reasons for that:

* I’d grown up as an almost exclusively single-player 20th century gamer – the luxury of being online for hours at a time was a foreign concept. The World Wide Web started to be a thing in the ’90s, but at least in South Africa, broadband internet wasn’t available to me. We had a dial-up modem towards the end of high school, but you paid by the minute and nobody could use the house phone while someone was online, so my father greatly restricted its use. “Back in my day”, playing video games with your friends meant lugging over your PC, CRT monitor and peripherals and hooking up a peer-to-peer cable. MMORPGs just weren’t yet on my radar as a viable genre of interest

* In 2006, RuneScape itself was relatively new. RuneScape 2 (3D version of 2D RuneScape Classic) released in 2004. The subsequent partnership with Miniclip was at its peak in 2005-2007 and spreading through fantastic word of mouth in schools, but I was a post-graduate working adult long past that demographic

* At the time I was very into real-time strategy games, teaching myself game programming and developing my own prototypes, and contributing to a world-wide open-source RTS development project to build up my portfolio

But once we confirmed the interview date over in Cambridge, the first thing I did was create a RuneScape account, so I could get familiar with the constraints and context of the shared technology for Mechscape development. I’m still playing that RuneScape account as my main to this day.

TGN: What are some of your main roles as Senior Narrative Designer?

MS: * Designer: We design, develop and review RuneScape game content, considering the gameplay, end-user experience and technical implementation.

* Narrative: We have a particular specialism in narrative design and game writing, with the ability to produce and review strong in-game prose. This includes proactively offering narrative input to team projects, maintaining relevant documentation, and coordinating with the lore council to resolve story-related issues and hone the team’s narrative craft.
** Narrative design: emotional connection, visual storytelling, cinematography, composition – narrative design is about how you make players feel; the derived emotional experience when those components interconnect. It’s distinct from
** Game writing: character and plot development, lore, and writing in-game text (dialogue, descriptions, etc) that comply with editorial guidelines

* Senior: Essentially expected to be MOAR on a variety of levels; held to higher standards of excellence and independence due to proven development experience

TGN: What has been your favorite project to work on, for RuneScape?

MS: I struggle with this question every time. Every project over nearly 20 years has brought its own joys, outcomes, and treasured moments, whether that’s the satisfaction of the result, efficiency solutions, how players responded to it, what I learned along the way, or the collaborative journey to the destination and how much we enjoyed working together.
I’m going to be very annoying and not give a definitive answer, as at this stage my top ten favourites are a tough choice.

TGN: What would you say is the most difficult part of your job at Jagex?

MS: Saying ‘no’ to players. We have such a wonderful framework for open communication, and our player-base are so passionate, so committed and care so much about this game. Whenever you discuss one topic, you’ll invariably get half a dozen requests to address barely connected issues of personal interest.

I am a pathological people pleaser, so when someone requests a little extra thing, and then another, and then another, it’s hard not to be firm about the scope boundaries of my project, and recognise the feature creep. As wonderful as it would be to do all the little extra things that are requested, you have to draw a line, meet your obligations and ship your project. It’s a living game. There will be other opportunities. RuneScape is never finished.

One of my hardest lessons has been that every ‘just one more thing’ isn’t solved by working some extra hours tonight and silently absorbing the cost. That scope creep affects everyone down the production line. The QA analyst testing my content, the localisation staff for each language whose word count grew a little, the release candidate tester who now has to test a slighter more complex feature.

It’s a team effort, so they deserve the respect to get their consent, or cut a feature elsewhere to manage their workload accordingly.

TGN: Very few online games have lasted as long as RuneScape has. In your opinion, what do you think the key factor is behind its longevity?

MS: * Quirky: RuneScape’s built a bit different. And I think that resonates with a particular minority of player who’ll find appeal in what RuneScape offers. A repetitive predictable grind is monotonous to some and soothing/rewarding to others. RuneScape’s not for everyone, and that’s okay, because those that do resonate with RuneScape never truly leave.
** RuneScape’s lumped in the MMORPG genre, but it predates most of the genre tropes. To crib someone else’s thesis statement, I see RuneScape as a massively single-player online roleplaying game.
** it’s self-directed progression of independently viable goals, where you have agency to choose the level of attention and intensity, and get delightfully distracted as much as you like
** it’s a persistently online shared space; your progress is earned through effort and permanently and securely saved (no reloading, no cheats), which demands fairness and integrity
** it’s social, but with minimal enforced interaction. You choose your progression path, and journey Alone Together. We’re all on our own adventure, and however much you want to share that journey is largely up to you
** it suits the kind of obsessive, detail-focused player who’s willing to work for their delayed gratification, research and plan their route, and sees RuneScape as a puzzle to decipher and complete, at least for a while
** it’s a game that rewards perseverance and promises mastery

* Evolution: It’s harder to kill a moving target. We grow, we evolve, we adapt. Mistakes are made and we find ways to course correct. As long as we’re humble and are willing to learn and adapt, we’ll keep moving.

TGN: If you had the chance to work on any other video game, past/present, which game would you most like to be a part of the creation?

MS: Another cop-out answer, but I don’t have a particular game I’d like to develop. I think that’s a key reason I’m happy where I am, because I get to make so many different things, and I enjoy the process.

For me, much like in RuneScape, the joy is in the adventure. The journey to Mordor. The progression toward achieving the goal. The people who worked together with me in the trenches and pooled their talents to make this vision happen. The friendships and shared interests. The players I’ve hopefully managed to entertain, satisfy or at least occupy with the outcome, and the feedback I can action or use to grow in future.

TGN: What games do you enjoy presently?

MS: Maintaining multiple RuneScape accounts doesn’t leave much room for other games! I have Meldor Idle running most of the time, but by design that barely counts.

As something of an occupational hazard, nowadays I either play games as intentional research projects, or dabble for short bursts of entertainment and then get distracted. The Secret of Monkey Island was one of my favourite games growing up, and I’ve been nibbling on Return to Monkey Island for nearly 3 years.

Oddly enough, I get plenty of satisfaction from game development, so I don’t need gaming so much. I wonder if that means I won the game.

TGN: Thanks to Mod Stu for the chat, and the in-depth look at his past, and career at Jagex!