Myst (series) - Development

Development

Myst was originally conceptualized by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller. The Millers had created fictional worlds and stories as young children, influenced by the works of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov. They formed a video game company together called Cyan, Inc.; their first game, called The Manhole, won the Software Publishers Association award in 1988 for best use of the digital medium. Cyan produced other games, aimed at children; the Millers eventually decided their next project would be made for adults.

The brothers spent months designing the Ages comprising the game, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" Cyan had made for children's games. The game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Robyn's unfinished novel, Dunnyhut, influenced aspects of Myst's story, which was developed bit by bit as the brothers conceptualized the various worlds. As development progressed, the Millers realized that they would need to have even more story and history than would be revealed in the game itself. Realizing that fans would enjoy getting a deeper look at the story not in the games, the Millers produced a rough draft of what would become a novel, Myst: The Book of Atrus.

After the enormous response to Myst, work quickly began on the next Myst game. Cyan moved from their cramped garage to a new office and hired additional programmers, designers, and artists. The game was to ship in late 1996, but the release was pushed back a year. Development costs were between $5 and $10 million, many times Myst's budget. After the release of Riven, Robyn Miller left the company to pursue other projects, while Rand stayed behind to work on a Myst and Riven franchise.

While Rand Miller stated Cyan would not make another sequel to Myst, Mattel (then the owner of the Myst and Riven franchise) offered the task of developing a sequel to several video game companies who created detailed story proposals and technology demonstrations. Presto Studios, makers of the Journeyman Project adventure games, was hired to develop Myst III. Presto spent millions developing the game and used the studio's entire staff to complete the project, which took two and a half years to develop. Soon after Myst III: Exile was released, Presto was shut down, and Exile publisher Ubisoft developed the sequel, Myst IV: Revelation, internally. Meanwhile Cyan produced the spinoff title Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, which included an aborted multiplayer component allowing players to cooperatively solve puzzles.

Cyan returned to produce what was billed as the final game in the series, discarding live action sequences embedded in prerendered graphics for a world rendered in realtime. The actors' faces were turned into textures and mapped onto digital characters, with the actor's actions synchronized by motion capture. Shortly before release, Cyan closed down development, although this did not impact the release of the game; the company was able to rehire its employees a few weeks later, and continued to work on non-Myst projects and an attempted resurrection of Uru's multiplayer component, Myst Online. Servers paid for by donation were set up in 2010, and the game went open-source in 2011.

Among the detailed elements of the Myst universe Cyan created was the language and culture of the D'ni. The civilization's numbers and writing first appeared in Riven, and were important to solving some of the game's puzzles. The D'ni language was the language presented in various games and novels of the Myst franchise, created by Richard A. Watson. Several online D'ni dictionaries have been developed as part of the ongoing fan-based culture associated with the game.