Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard has confirmed that RuneScape successor MechScape has been canned just prior to its release.

The decision, he told GamesIndustry.biz, was made in August when the assembled game failed to meet the standards of Jagex's new CEO and his team.

"Initially the reason for building MechScape was that we would learn all the lessons from RuneScape having run it for around four years at the time.

"It got near completion and we discovered, oops, it didn't do all of those things that we wanted it to. So we went back to the original design document and said 'let's do it again'."

Cancelling the project at such a late stage has made for an expensive learning curve, admitted Gerhard, although he agreed the company's continued financial success helped the situation.

"Yes, it's a luxury that we are doing well and we can afford to make the decision. I didn't make the decision lightly because it's effectively cost us tens of millions of pounds. Maybe more."

But it was vital, he said, for Jagex to release a game it was proud of and that its team would want to play. “ It's crucial to me we don't just ship a title because we've built it.”

"The previous game wasn't a game that we want to play. As much as we ended up thinking of it like a baby – we were 'reasonably' proud of it, we thought it was a good experience and we'd achieved something – it wasn't a game ready for launch.

"It was expensive. I hope never again to have to make the same decision twice. But it was the right decision."

Not everything has been lost however, and Gerhard says that much of the game – including its engine - will be reused in the new secret project the Jagex development team is now working on.

"A lot of the content will change," he said, "a lot of the gameplay will change. Exactly what the game will look and feel like I don't actually know because the guys are working on it as we speak. But we've got that arsenal of lessons and everything else."

This new title will be released within a "meaningful time frame" he added with a smile. At Game Horizon's Best of British event on Wednesday, Simon Seefeldt, the company's head of business development, was more specific, saying Jagex's next game will appear sometime in 2010.

Ending on a positive note, Gerhard said the new MMO's development team has been "galvanized" by the decision that's been taken.

"I've been in the organisation for two years now and I've never seen that team so excited since I joined," he said.

"They've spent years of toil on this and never quite got there, and now the entire team, sees what the plans are to change and what the new game will be. There's a real buzz in that studio, which is fantastic. The guys are doing an incredible job of bringing this to market."

Runescape creator Jagex has made the decision to scrap its long-in-production second MMO MechScape, it has emerged.

The plug was pulled on the futuristic title in August – despite a formal announcement in March that the game was due for release later this year – costing the firm tens of millions of pounds.

However the firm still plans to launch a new MMO in 2010.

"Initially the reason for building MechScape was that we would learn all the lessons from RuneScape having run it for around four years at the time," said Gerhard in an interview with GI.

"It got near completion and we discovered, oops, it didn't do all of those things that we wanted it to. So we went back to the original design document and said 'let's do it again'."

"Yes, it's a luxury that we are doing well and we can afford to make the decision. I didn't make the decision lightly because it's effectively cost us tens of millions of pounds. Maybe more."

It’s a brave CEO who cancels his company’s second largest project after four years of development and shortly before release.

But that’s exactly what Mark Gerhard of Jagex has done with MechScape. The new MMO from the makers of Runescape has been canned shortly before release.

When Mark was first appointed, I questioned the wisdom of moving an internal CTO up to be CEO of a company that was so dominated by the personality and thoughts of the original founder.

But this announcement suggests that I may have been wrong.

I have no particular inisght on MechScape – I’ve never seen the game and I don’t know if it was as disappointing as reports suggest.

But I do know that bringing out a successful sequel to Runescape is critical to Jagex. They need to prove that they are a scaleable business that can repeat their outstanding success otherwise they are destined to begin a slow slide into obscurity.

If MechScape was under par, it would have been an easy decision to launch it and see what the public thought. Instead, Jagex has canned it, despite tens of millions of investment, because it just isn’t good enough.

That’s a brave decision. And it shows that Mark has the courage of his convictions.

So good on them, and I wish them luck with “son-of-MechScape” or whatever it will be.