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Cyan Worlds Closes
ThPhox writes "Several former employees are reporting on their blogs that Cyan Worlds, the creator of the Myst series of games for Macintosh and PC, has apparently closed. Myst was the best selling PC game of all time, until The Sims, and inspired four sequels, three novels, and a spin-off MMORPG. In 1993, it had amazing graphics, and was one of the first games to be released on CD-ROM. Riven, released in 1995, stunned the world with unparalleled graphics and story. Cyan, you will be greatly missed. But, as they say; 'Perhaps the ending, had not yet been written...'"
Posted yesterday, and the last bit is mangled. Here's the original.
"I realized the moment I fell into the fissure that the book would not be
destroyed as I had planned. It continued falling into that starry expense,
of which I had only a fleeting glimpse. I have tried to speculate where it
might have landed, but I must admit that such conjecture is futile. Still,
questions about whose hands might one day hold my Myst book are unsettling
to me. I know my apprehensions might never be allayed, and so I close,
realizing perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
I remember playing Myst back in the day. I'd make some progress, then somehow end up back where I was, going in circles the whole time. There was this spot where you could read about the news, but when you returned years later, it was always the same ...
I remember taking a tour of their "studio" way back in the early Myst days... I worked at a similar shop, and we'd been talking about doing stuff like that for months, and then BOOM! there it was... better than we could have imagined. They used all the common tools of the day in fantastic ways... after I got that game, I spent the rest of my workdays playing it. Research, y'know. But they weren't just crazy minds, they were very nice guys, too.
Then again, it's not like they've died or anything... but it's still sad to see them go.
Maybe all the employees are just trapped in a book somewhere.
"Lead my skeptic sight."
The reason that studio existed was for Myst. Now that the Myst series has ended, the closed. I'm greatful that they made sure to finish up the series (I don't think it was selling so great, so I'm surprised they were able to finish it). I read the Myst books too. Good reading.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Way to go, editors.
No shit. Even Slashdot's piss-poor search engine found it with a simple search of 'cyan'. Though I suppose it can be explained as Google's fault because they haven't indexed yesterday's Slashdot articles yet.
Help Wanted:
Slashdot Editors Needed.
No skills required, lack of preferred.
Broccoli for brains a plus.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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The song name is "Good Riddance(Time Of Your Life)", however, the people playing it on the radio and such cut off the "Good Riddance" part. On their greatest hits album, International Superhits!, they called it "Good Riddance".
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Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The Myst series was one of the best point-and-click adventure games of all time. It had the best puzzles, the best graphics of it's time, and it didn't get old, it just sucked you in. Those games could take a long time to finish and therefore had a very high playability value. I think Cyan was an inspiration to other game developers. We shall see if any new games come out that even come close to the Myst series.
Hate to say it, but I bought Myst, my wife and I played it, and we thought it was dull, dull, dull.
OK puzzles (Seventh Guest's were good too), but didn't save it for us.
To each.
When I got a CD drive for my Macintosh LC, it came with a couple of CDs, including Cosmic Osmo and The Worlds Beyond The Mackerel, a Hypercard interactive adventure that was somewhat of a precusor of Myst (Myst and Riven are both, in terms of gameplay UI and whatnot, rather Hypercard-ish), save the intended age group, complexity, etc. Kind of aimed at kids, but even though I was ~15-16, it was fun. Pretty nice bluesy-jazzy music soundtrack too, included as CD Audio tracks on the same CDROM (only fault of the soundtrack was that it was blatantly a bunch of MIDI machines doing the performing. Myst was much worse; cheesy MIDI instruments galore. They got much better at it with Riven, mostly by limiting themselves exclusively to "electronic" instruments, instead of trying to pretend they had real instruments.)
Please help metamoderate.
Sounds a bit like Real Life.
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Of course, the only game I ever saw match the Myst series was Schizm - but then, as the only person on the planet who bought, played, finished (without cheats!) and enjoyed Schizm (or even heard of it), I *would* say that.
Magenta, Yellow, and Black Worlds are doing just fine.
Cyan, you will be greatly missed. But, as they say; 'Perhaps the ending, had not yet been written...'"
Actually, yes it has. Myst and the Cyan studio are unfortunatly part of the dying 'adventure genre' that saw it's peak years ago and has yet to be embraced in a world of games that require fast paced, gun-toting crime lords set on City X. The inability for the PC to be seen as anything else as a MMO/FPS platform in recent years hasn't exactly helped sales either.
Myst was top dog for a long time as the highest selling game, with Sims alone as the only game to have displaced it. For a small studio like Cyan, they've already engraved themselves in video game history. Today, that's about the best you can hope for.
a hurricane is approaching new orleans!
soon to be posted: Bush's chances for 2004.
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to MYST, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Even at 13 or 14 that damn game baffled the hell out of me and my parents (we were deeply sucked into games like monkey island and loom though).
Why on earth did people play this game where the minimum player requirements were aparently an IQ of 180+ and a brain the size of a small planet!
The same reason people to crossword puzzles. It provides a chalange. If you complete Quake II, that's nice. But you complete Myst... that's something to be proud of.
It reminds me of the realy text adventures by Scott Adams. These things you typicaly couldn't complete in a day. My usual method was to play for a week or so, put it aside when I couldn't figure something out... then later on a little lightbulb would light up and figure out a little piece of the puzzle and then return to the game. The key difference with text adventures is the fact that the difficulty wasn't always figuring out a puzzle but rather figuring out how to phrase things in a way the game could understand. This was my problem with Scott Adams games (how do I say put bubblegum on the stick in only two words).
Probally the best thing about Myst is the fact, other than the surreal music sucked you into the game, was the fact that it could be enjoyed by two or more people at the same time trying to figure out these puzzles. Given the choice between watching "Must See TV"(tm) or what is basicly an interative story that requires thought to figure out... i'd pick the interactive story.
On a side note... Myst was the game that encouranged me to actually buy a freaking CD-rom drive, PCI video card, and something a 16bit sound card. Before that I didn't have much need for a rom drive as anything I needed I could get on floppy.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Myst was also the last amazing game to premiere on (and for a time only ran on) Macs first. I saw a demo of it at an old Macworld Expo and it blew me away. I knew it would be something special.
When I saw the first PC versions of it in the early 90's, my little geek heart sank.
Ah. Adventure games. That takes me back. To a time when games were fun and not a graphical pissing contest.
Myst felt a lot like cocaine to me. . . lots of work to get it, and you're all excited, but the climax. . . meh.
Long run for a short slide. After spending the hours to beat it, the ending pissed me off to no end. "Now you may explore the world to your heart's content! P.S. we reset all the annoying puzzles, do them again, bitch!"
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Wow. If the last thing that a company did was in nearly 10 years ago (8 for Mr. Picky here.) then maybe closing their doors wasnt a bad idea...
I thought they closed up shop a long time ago.
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
...So we lose one of the few companies to produce interesting games that don't involve shooting anything that moves. Yes, perhaps the plot and/or interface of some of their games could have stood a bit of work. But Cyan was one of the few companies producing games that appeal to the intellect and sense of adventure -- rather than to the players' adrenaline levels. Somewhat like complaining that the only sushi bar in town got only mediocre reviews -- when the alternative is the local greasy spoon.
Who's next, Microids??
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.