With New York City’s Gay Pride Week coming up so soon (June 19-27), it seems somewhat ironic that a game would get itself in trouble for discriminating against gay players. User “Gothix,” a Dragon’s Call player, created quite a fuss a few days ago upon learning that the word “gay” was filtered in the game’s World Chat. “Haze,” a player volunteer, (called a Game Helper, of GH), muted Gothix after he repeatedly bypassed the filter, and the issue escalated to span the Dragon’s Call forum and an outer game forum called Kongragate.

Things got ugly fast, as Gothix threatened to take legal action against Dragon’s Call if things didn’t change. Fortunately, the issue was resolved, and the word became unfiltered.

World of Warcraft

The unnamed MMO was revealed by CEO Geoff Iddison during a panel discussion at today’s GameHorizon Conference in Newcastle.

Dubbed ‘Nextscape’ by Iddison, the game was said to incorporate – as Runescape does – a variety of business and subscription models to drive consumer engagement, he said.

However, although the company has run its successful Runescape MMO since 2001 – offering biweekly content updates - with the new property due to join it early next year, Iddison said that Jagex’ real value isn’t its IP, but its infrastructure.

“We’ve got an infrastructure behind Runescape which is the real silver of the Jagex, the value of the company,” said Iddison. “It’s not the game, the game is going to come and go,” he said.

“The infrastructure is the thing that can scale. Runescape has 10 years of good growth – but the infrastructure is infinitely scalable,” he added of Jagex’ vast operation of servers and online support teams.

Although Jagex employs 400 people at its Cambridge, UK HQ, only 25 per cent are dedicated to development. Half the staff are focused on content and support whi