Ego Trip: Paul Gower

[To see first hand how other developers fared in our monthly quiz, you can find the rest here]

Welcome to Ego Trip, where we ask the finest game development talent a series of questions about the toughest subject of all – their own games.

In the chair this month is the lovely Paul Gower. Here he is:

Paul Gower on the right with brother Andrew on the left, not the other way round as we previously incorrectly reported. Sorry Andrew! We mean Paul!

PROFILE

Name: Paul Gower
Famous for: Founding Jagex with brother Andrew
Answering questions on: RuneScape

Can you recall the exact date the first public Beta of the very first version of RuneScape went public?
Definitely. I remember that well. It was January 4th 2004. I remember it very clearly. Every RuneScape anniversary reminds me of that one. That date has become the marker of the achievement of how long RuneScape has been going.

What was the actual name, rather than the commonly known initials, of the author of the RuneScape novels such as Legacy of Blood?
That was Tom Church. He’s better known as T.S. Church. It took a while for people to know.

What exactly is Fist of Guthix, and what does it involve?
Fist of Guthix is one of our mini-games within RuneScape. It’s a PVP kind of game that assigned players combatant rivals and asked them to take it in turns to hunt one another down.

What was the codename of the recently developed anti-bot system introduced to improve RuneScape?
That was the something we called the ClusterFlutterer.

Could you name the RuneScape world’s three most common types of mod?
That one is easy. It’s Jagex Mods, who are staff, the Player Mods that are in-game volunteers, and the Forum Mods.

To the nearest ten, how many English servers currently serve RuneScape?
Oh dear. This one will catch me out. I really don’t know. This is tricky as they keep changing. Maybe 170. I’ll say 172.

(At the time of the quiz in early January, the English servers numbered 139)

­­
1. Charles Cecil
(5/6)
1. Sean Murray
(5/6)
1. Paul Gower
(5/6)
4. Martin Hollis
(4/6)

Poor Martin Hollis. He’s the only one without a 5/6 score. And Charles Cecil now has two developers hogging the top-spot with him.

Over the coming months you’ll see this leaderboard evolve into a defining list of industry masterminds (or a high score board of game development’s most ambitious egomaniacs, depending on how you look at it).