How Phil Mansell went from the ZX Spectrum to becoming the CEO of RuneScape

Andy Martin spoke to Phil Mansell about his career from programming on a ZX Spectrum, working with Playstation and then joining Jagex to look after RuneScape

RuneScape is a tapestry of folklore and legend and fantasy (Jagex)

It’s not often I come away from an interview with a magic sword poking out of my backpack. This was one of those rare times. In the real world, I had cycled off to see Phil Mansell, CEO of Jagex, at the Cambridge Science Park. But in the more heroic virtual world I battled my way across a barren, body-strewn wilderness, pursued by fire-breathing dragons and aided by a particularly beautiful woman archer in my quest for revenge or salvation or a pot of gold. Because Jagex is the creator of RuneScape, the classic online game that now has more players than ever.

In the fantasy land of Gielinor, I imagine we would have sailed across a silver sea together in search of adventure, but as it was I sat with Phil Mansell in the Golden Gnome pub, situated inside the Jagex campus, where staff go for their “AFK” time (Away From Keyboard). Like all good virtuosos, Mansell started young, conjuring up his own games on the ZX Spectrum computer by the age of 10. He was particularly traumatised one fine day in the 1980s when his baby brother got hold of a game he had spent ages programming and chewed it to destruction (since files were then stored on cassette tapes).

This early setback only served to spur him and he was soon pounding the BBC Acorn keyboard and selling games in the school playground. “I’m not an artist,” says Mansell. “I got a ‘D’ in my O-level art. But with a computer you don’t have to rely on innate aesthetic skills. You can build creative works even if you’re not that talented.”

Mansell discovered the internet when he was 16 and started making modifications to existing games, making up new levels and better monsters. He got a weekend job working in an internet cafe in Holborn, which is where he was discovered. They held regular video game tournaments at the cafe and one time a Quake team from Guildford turned up (Quake was the number one first-person shooter game of the Nineties). “You did this?” they said. “We love your levels!”

It turned out they worked for Bullfrog, a leading British games company of the era. Mansell didn’t even bother to finish his A-levels: he dropped out to become a design assistant at Bullfrog. “It was my big break,” says Mansell. “I went from total amateur to working in a professional environment. It was an entry-level low-wage job, but I loved it. I was learning the craft.” He contributed to games like Populous, Theme Park, and Dungeon Keeper 2.

Then in 2000 he joined Playstation in Cambridge. Mansell was living in shared accommodation with postgrads and leading a student lifestyle, but he was building video games – MediEvil, Primal and Ghosthunter among others – rather than going to lectures. “A part of me wondered if I’d missed out,” he says. Now you can do video games courses at university, back then you had to forge your own path. But he became part of the incipient global gaming revolution.

RuneScape is a tapestry of folklore and legend and fantasy, with assorted Tolkien tropes on top. It pulls together threads from Scandinavian sagas and Camelot and Middle Earth

He twice played in the UK Quake team in international competitions. But in gaming a team is not a team, it’s a “clan” and Mansell enjoyed being part of the gaming community. “I had friends I was going to the pub with – but at the same time I had a lot of online friends, I was part of this other world that really spoke to me.”

Mansell went to Climax in Portsmouth as a games designer for hire. At Playstation he had had unlimited resources; now he had to think in terms of “leanness” and ask himself the question, “Is this the best use of my time?” He found that he could readily fuse together the creative and the commercial.

Then, 10 years ago, he was headhunted by Jagex, who are both developers and publishers. Their flagship was RuneScape, a game famous the world over – it even gets into the Guinness Book of Records – the longest lasting most successful game with the highest level of players. This year is its 20th anniversary and it has over 5 million active players around the world (hence the tag MMORPG, “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game”).

“ARM” in the gaming world stands for “Acquisition, Retention and Monetisation” – of players. “I was fascinated by that,” says Mansell. “That’s the thing about gaming, it brings joy to people, but it’s a business too.” He started off working on games that cost £40 a throw, but now he shifted to a game that is free at the point of entry but draws you in so that at some point you are willing to pay for it. The “player funnel” means that you’re being retained even if you don’t know it. “There has to be a business engine that generates income month after month.”

RuneScape is a tapestry of folklore and legend and fantasy, with assorted Tolkien tropes on top. It pulls together threads from Scandinavian sagas and Camelot and Middle Earth, but weaves in gods of war you may never have heard of and a lot of new ancient heroes and heroines. And adds a solid dose of humour too. If that isn’t enough, you can explore Old School RuneScape, a retro version from 2007 that was relaunched on Mansell’s watch. “You have to update it and keep it fresh, but at the same time players have to feel it’s authentic.” Two years ago Old School won the BAFTA for the best mobile game: Mansell collected it.

Like Beowulf or Gilgamesh, RuneScape has no single author: it has been gradually composed or engineered by hundreds of different “content developers” over the years. “It’s a web of stories,” says Mansell. “Each node is a quest”. You wander around this world solving puzzles or chopping wood or getting into fights. You never really know what’s around the next corner. What starts off as a story about a corrupt king turns into a plot to do with the Elven gods. “You can dive into people’s minds and play inside their memories.”

Probably the closest analogy is with the Marvel creative universe. But one thing strikes me about the world of RuneScape: it is extremely sensitive to the desires and dreams of its community of players. Jagex doesn’t just get feedback, it gets “feedforward” too. Users get to vote on storylines on their forums before they get locked in. New adventures have to attract a 75 per cent-plus vote in favour to get greenlit. “They can stop us doing something if they don’t like it,” says Mansell. “They have the power of veto”.

Phil Mansell says user have the power of veto on storylines (Jagex)

But they also get to chip in ideas. “Dead Man Mode”, for example, a more ruthless, no-holds-barred version of the game, was first proposed in an online forum. “It became huge,” says Mansell. “It’s turned into an esports game.” Developers often discuss ideas with players in real time. Rather as if I was going on Good Morning Britain – but with extra swords and shields – I get to sit on the studio sofa alongside Phil Mansell and have a close virtual encounter on a hundred screens with a legion of fans being piped in from as far away as Australia. Or their avatars anyway.

From time to time, RuneScape fans get to meet up in the real world, usually dressed as their favourite characters and armed with appropriate (simulated) weaponry. Two of them ended up getting married. I like to imagine that they will have extremely rebellious children who cause their parents no end of worry by refusing to play video games and insisting on doing their homework instead. Perhaps they will even sit their A-levels. And tell their parents to get off their computers and go and get some fresh air for a change.

Jagex raises funds for three mental health good causes. Is that because video games drive you mad? Phil Mansell says that it’s the exact opposite. “When the real world is so harsh, RuneScape provides a comforting refuge where you can forget your troubles and go fishing with your friends and kill evil monsters.”

@andymartinink