| Andrew Gower | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Nationality | English | ||
| Occupation | Lead developer and co-founder of Jagex Ltd. | ||
| Net worth | £106 million (US$217 million) shared with brother Paul. | ||
| Relatives | Paul Gower (brother) Ian Gower (brother) | ||
| Website | http://www.jagex.com, http://www.runescape.com | ||
Andrew Christopher Gower (born December 3, 1978) is the co-founder of Jagex and the lead developer of RuneScape, a popular MMORPG with more free players than any other online game. During his youth, he spent his spare time creating computer programs, and in 1997, he started work as a freelance Java programmer. He created RuneScape at the University of Cambridge. The 2007 Sunday Times Rich List claims that Andrew and Paul Gower are the 654th richest men in the UK, worth £113 million (US $217 million). According to Jagex documents from Companies House, Andrew owns a 38.35% stake in Jagex.
Education
Andrew Gower attended The Becket School in Nottingham from 1990 until 1997; he then studied at Cambridge University, where he obtained a degree in computer-science.
Creations and programs
Between 1995 and 1996 Andrew created Parallax Painter, Battle Zone and Destruction Imminent (published by Goodmans) on the Atari ST under the name Cunning & Devious Games. This group consisted of Andrew, Paul and Ian Gower as well as Peter Oliver. He then began trading as Jagex and created a series of Java games from 1996 to 1999, most of which appeared on the website Games Domain. This included several single player games and a 3D castle with a variety of classic multiplayer games. Vertigo is currently available from the Jagex website and some of the others, such as Flea Circus, have been recreated for the FunOrb arcade.
Andrew's most well known game is RuneScape, which he created in the January 2001. Along with Paul Gower and Constant Tedder, Andrew founded Jagex to develop the game.
MechScape
MechScape is a game currently in development by Jagex. It was officially announced in July 2008 at E3 2008 and is stated to be released in the first quarter of 2009. It will be a science-fiction based game with graphics slightly more advanced than RuneScape's. It is currently unknown what Andrew Gower's involvement is in the game. MechScape may also have a change of name, one of which could be Stellar Dawn.
FunOrb
On the 27th of February 2008, Andrew's team created their second most major release since their popular MMORPG RuneScape. This successful release was known as FunOrb and is a site full of browser based mini games. Some of the sites games are sequels to games created in the past, such as Vertigo, Monkey Puzzle, Flea Circus, Slime Wars, Quad-Link and Meltdown. More than 30 games are on FunOrb and are still continuing to develop more addicting browser based games.
RuneScape
RuneScape is a successful MMORPG created by the Gower brothers in 1998, first known as DeviousMUD. In 2002, it was then known as RuneScape. RuneScape has over 135 million accounts made worldwide and has over 1 million paying members and 10 million active free players. RuneScape is well known for being the most free MMORPG so far and has a team known as Jagex working on it, developing new quests, skills and other updates to improve the popularity of RuneScape.
See also
- Andrew Gower
- Paul Gower
- Ian Gower
External Links