# Andrew Gower - Maker: Game designer - Houses: Jagex - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/andrew-gower/ > The Cambridge programmer who wrote RuneScape in Java from his family's home in Nottingham, turning a free browser game into one of the most-played MMORPGs ever made. **Why it matters:** Gower's RuneScape brought the MMORPG to anyone with a web browser and a school computer, reaching an audience that subscription-and-CD-ROM worlds like EverQuest never touched. ## Quick answers **Who is Andrew Gower?** The Cambridge programmer who wrote RuneScape in Java from his family's home in Nottingham, turning a free browser game into one of the most-played MMORPGs ever made. **What is Andrew Gower known for?** Andrew Gower is best known for RuneScape. **Why does Andrew Gower matter to fantasy and games?** Gower's RuneScape brought the MMORPG to anyone with a web browser and a school computer, reaching an audience that subscription-and-CD-ROM worlds like EverQuest never touched. ## Life Andrew Christopher Gower grew up in Nottingham, England, one of three brothers, with Paul and Ian, who would help him make games throughout his career. He learned to program on the Atari ST, the home computer that anchored much of the British hobbyist scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and was publishing his own work by the mid-1990s: *Parallax Painter*, a 3D platform game, in 1995, and *Destruction Imminent*, a 3D first-person shooter, in 1996, both for the ST. He studied at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2000, and RuneScape took shape during his student years. Along the way he switched to Java, the new language that let small programs run inside a web browser. Between 1997 and 1999 he wrote a string of Java games, most of them hosted on the portal Games Domain, including a Wolfenstein-style 3D castle that housed a collection of classic multiplayer games. Those browser experiments were the seedbed of everything that followed. ## Work Gower's next project was an isometric role-playing game in Java called *DeviousMUD*, whose name acknowledged the text [MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mud/) tradition of shared online worlds. He reworked the concept into a full online RPG, and in 1999 he and Paul founded Jagex to build it. *RuneScape* went live as a beta on January 4, 2001, running at first from the family home in Nottingham. It asked for nothing but a web browser: no install disc, no powerful PC, no credit card. For teenagers on school and library computers across Britain and beyond, that was revolutionary. The world of Gielinor was modest in its graphics but generous in its systems. Players raised a long list of independent skills, from combat to fishing, woodcutting and cooking, trained them through patient repetition, and traded the results in a lively economy. The appeal of [Grinding](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/grinding/) a skill toward its cap, alone or alongside friends, became RuneScape's signature. Within a year of launch more than a million free accounts had been registered. Success created costs. With the dot-com crash drying up advertising revenue, the Gowers and Constant Tedder formally launched the company in its current form in December 2001, with Tedder as chief executive, and on February 27, 2002, opened a paid members' version with extra content. It gained 2,000 subscribers in its first hour and 5,000 in its first week. Gower led a complete graphical and engine rewrite, released in March 2004 as *RuneScape 2* (the original became known as *RuneScape Classic*), and developed much of the early game's skills and regions with Paul. He remained deeply involved in design for years afterward, including the Dungeoneering skill, which he helped design in 2009 and 2010. By 2007 RuneScape had passed a million paying subscribers, and that year the *Sunday Times Rich List* valued the Gower brothers' fortune at £196 million. Guinness World Records named RuneScape the world's most popular free MMORPG in 2008, and later listed it as the MMO with the most users; Jagex has reported more than 300 million accounts created across the franchise. As outside investors took larger stakes in [Jagex](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/jagex/), Andrew and Paul Gower left its board in December 2010. Andrew served as the company's principal architect during 2011 and then departed entirely. In 2010 he founded a new company, Fen Research, and in 2016 began work on *Brighter Shores*, an online RPG built on Fen's own engine and designed around profession-based progression reminiscent of RuneScape's skills. Paul Gower joined as narrative designer. The game entered early access on Steam on November 6, 2024. ## Legacy RuneScape's significance lies in who it reached. At the turn of the millennium, [Ultima Online](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/ultima-online/) and [EverQuest](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/everquest/) required a boxed game, a capable PC and a monthly fee; RuneScape required a browser. It introduced millions of young players to the rituals of the [MMORPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/mmorpg/), from skill grinds to trading and questing, and it did so from a small British company rather than a publisher's studio. Its staying power has been extraordinary: the separate *Old School RuneScape*, launched in 2013 from a 2007 backup of the game after a player vote, became a major success in its own right, and by 2026 the two games had earned more than US$3 billion in lifetime revenue. The Gower brothers' Industry Legend award at the 2010 Develop Awards recognized that achievement. For visitors tracing the [Worlds Online](https://www.lanternhall.org/tours/worlds-online/) path, Andrew Gower represents a different route into the online world, one that ran not through Austin or Seoul but through a bedroom programmer's browser game. ## Facts - Before RuneScape he published 3D games for the Atari ST, including Parallax Painter (1995) and Destruction Imminent (1996). - His late-1990s isometric Java RPG, DeviousMUD, was the prototype for [RuneScape](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/runescape/). - RuneScape went live as a beta on January 4, 2001, initially run from the Gower family home in Nottingham. - When the paid members' version opened on February 27, 2002, it drew 5,000 subscribers in its first week. - Guinness World Records recognized RuneScape in 2008 as the world's most popular free MMORPG. - He and his brother Paul received the Develop Awards' Industry Legend prize in 2010. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia: Jagex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagex) - [Wikipedia: RuneScape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape) - [RuneScape Wiki: Andrew Gower](https://runescape.wiki/w/Andrew_Gower) - [Wikipedia: Brighter Shores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighter_Shores) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.