Big ambitions and 20 years of unaligned/outdated pieces of brand visuals and UI in a huge web of already public products created a throughly enjoyable problem to solve.
Jagex is a 20 year old brand with 1 primary IP and huge ambitions to become a world class games publisher. My job as lead designer within the Publishing Platform was to take our existing products (ecommerce, game websites, accounts and corporate website) and create a consistent visual identity for the Jagex brand UI which could be applied to existing products and new ones. The first new product which I also designed alongside the design system was the Jagex Games Launcher.
The game launcher was the key first product to be released by the Jagex brand which wasn't a game, it would also be the first product to be released publicly to kick of the companies new agenda to publish third party games.
With a distinguished history spanning 23 years, Jagex has become synonymous with its flagship title, 'RuneScape.' This iconic game has garnered immense popularity, achieving over 320 million accounts during its tenure. Renowned in the gaming world, Jagex has long been recognised as the creators of RuneScape. Now, they have ambitions to expand their horizons by venturing into publishing a range of new IPs, both developed in-house and from third-party studios. This strategic shift marks an exciting new chapter for Jagex, as they aim to broaden their impact and legacy in the gaming industry.
This was a huge project for a brand with a lot of history. It was important to get a thorough understanding of the Jagex brand, both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape and their long histories. The plan was to position the Jagex brand as the home of living games with the two versions of the flagship IP RuneScape at the forefront and more games to come. I built a rough prototype of what the Jagex website might look like as the entry way into these RuneScape worlds and put this in front of people who were completely new to the world of RuneScape and Jagex, those who were familiar and those who were very active. We learnt a lot from this, chief of which was the confusion between the existing versions of the RuneScape IP, RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.
One of the key challenges of creating the new visual identity for the jagex brand and the games launcher in particular was addressing the confusion between the two games under the studios IP of 'RuneScape'. The RuneScape IP itself is over 20 years old, the game is long running and has a huge audience around the world, a huge part of the success of the game is nostalgia, adults coming back to the game that was such a huge part of the childhood but this also caused a problem because of the release of Old School RuneScape a new game that looks old.
I worked closely with stakeholders from around the company including the creative directors and executive producers of each game to research and plan the UX of the launcher to address this confusion.
One of the most important things to come out of the project was company wide shared language around three key types of user:
These users were completely new to RuneScape and the Jagex brand as a whole
Users that have Jagex accounts and have played one of the RuneScape games since the creation of Old School RuneScape in 2013
Users that have Jagex accounts but have no played either of the games since the creation of Old School RuneScape in 2013
We had tight deadlines to support the first release of the first third party published game so I opted to work on the design system creation alongside the game launcher once I'd had some time to ideate and started to hone in a visual direction that was approved by stakeholders in the publishing platform and each IP
