MYSTery




What makes a cannon game? Through my game play of Myst I found out and uncovered why this game was so important and how it affected the gaming industry and im sure after reading through my report on how and why it is so important to computer gaming you too will understand what made Myst so important and why that it deserves to be classified as a cannon game.



Myst created by Cyan Worlds a video game company founded by Rand and Robyn Miller. It been said that Myst puts the Myst in Mysterious Island a book that the Miller brothers quote as being the some of the inspiration behind the game and title “Myst was simply a working title that came from Jules Verne's Mysterious Island”[1] as stated by Rand Miller. But for me my first thought about the game was more like Myst puts the MY in MY GOD WHAT THE HECK AM I MEANT TO BE DOING, from the first scene I was lost and confused what was required of me, no menu bar, no interface, no objective message, just a mouse courser and a screen shot.

The only hint of story is a short intro movie at the start that hints at books being lost, but really it just made me more confused. After all Myst was from 1993 a time when I can remember playing games like ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’, ‘Super Mario’ and ‘Doom’ games of that era were very much plug and play, you would put the game in have an intro and start playing it was very simple time for games, you knew straight away what you needed to do in the game whether it was collecting coins or blasting away monsters. So I figured Myst would follow this standard, I thought once the game started it would all become more clear and I would have some sort of objective but no I was wrong. For the first 30 minutes of game play I just found myself clicking on the screen with no clue or any idea just trying to get a reaction from the game, the only thing I found out during this time was the game is set on a an island with different buildings scattered across it, after all Myst is a ‘point and click’ graphic adventure game, the kind of game that requires you to click the screen to either move somewhere new or to get a response off something like all the switches, buttons, levers and other various objects on the island. For me I was trying to click on something that would give me some sort of story about the game and so I can try to unravel this mystery of the books. Oddly this form of clicking interaction was something the Miller brothers had intended for a children’s game “A child would turn the page, click on items on each page, and those items would react in certain ways” [2] which Robyn Miller explained in the making of Myst. But it wasn’t until they made Myst did there theory clicking and then some sort of reaction in the game come to life. And the result was a much more dynamic then they had intended for there child’s game.



After having the search around the island for clues I still didn’t even who I was in the game am I playing myself, am I someone else? If so how and why am I on the island. But no nothing I didn’t receive any help from the game it was clear this game was not meant to be taken lightly and if you weren’t prepared to think and pay attention you weren’t going to progress anywhere in the game. Something that games of the time didn’t really offer players, games were seen for children but this game was intended to challenge even the best puzzle gamers. I decide to go back to the start, but this time move more slowly paying more attention, after all Myst did bring a 3D world to a 2D format by building the Myst island in a 3D world and then taking 2D bitmap snapshots and placing them into the game, when ever the player clicked to move somewhere the game would just cycle through the 2d images to make appear as though the player was moving through this virtual world. “Nintendo would later use this technique to great effect in Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo.” [3].


So I figured these fantastic graphics the game provides must be for a reason, besides just for cosmetic look. It didn’t take long on my journey back to the starting point on the island, I noticed a piece of paper on the ground, I click it and a letter opens up it tells me to go to the dock, go into the secret room and enter a code to see a message. I couldn’t help but kick myself for missing this the first time as it was so close to the start, but here it was my first puzzle to be solved, my first objective, something to aim to complete some sort of direction that I had been craving.



The letter says I need to enter the number of beacon transmitters on the island into the pad to receive the message. I reach the secret room and there’s a big well looking object in the middle but no pad? I find the pad under neath a piece of paper on the wall. I can see this game isn’t going to offer me anything easy. I enter the number into the pad, which was hidden under a piece of paper on the wall and then check out the well, a video appears and it is where I met Atrus the creator of the books and he has hidden his books, suspecting one of his sons wants to destroy them. First clue solved and im now starting to understand what is happening Erik Davis said “The puzzles thereby serve as the perfect metaphor for the unveiling of the hidden mysteries of the land.”[4] I have to agree with this metaphor as it wasn’t until I solved my first puzzle did begin to learn something about the islands story, and I think this is something which compelled many players to play Myst and why is was so successful being the number 1 selling computer game until sims, to find the story you must solve the puzzles, this complex structure something that challenged the players was very refreshing and unique game play of the time. The fact even after 17 years the game is still just as challenging is a compliment to the Miller brothers, many old games become easier after time but for a game to still hold itself even after so long is a true achievement.




Atrus tells me to check out the library and I do, i find a few me hints and clues as to what I need to do next. I decide to check out the log cabin, with a gas furnace and a safe, I turn on the gas but no fire. I open up the safe find matches and light the fire. That leads me to one of the best things about the game are the sound affects that are in it, from wind blowing when you up high, or birds chirping when walking through the trees to the fire crackling in the furnace. Chris Brandekamp a friend of the Miller brothers was the sound engineer on the game and one of the hardest tasks for them was creating these real sounds affects, to make the player feel as though they are in a real place. Often the sounds in real life when recorded would not sound how they were meant to be which meant the Millers and Chris had to find strange ways to record these sounds “the sound of fire in a boiler was created by driving over the gravel in the Miller brothers’ driveway. “ [5] and even the bubbling of water was made by “sticking a large tube into a toilet and blowing into it!”[5]. It was these lengths the Miller brothers and Chris went to create the most authentic and realistic fantasy island/ worlds possible.



I couldn’t help but be amazed at how Myst had combined the graphics with the music and sound affects so well to create this amazing atmosphere within the game and it certainly set a new standard on how good a game could look and feel. But how was this possibly and why weren’t other games doing this? One simple reason. And the reason why is possibly how Myst had the biggest impact on the gaming industry and it was because of the CD. They were one of the first games to use Compact disk drives to deliver there game. They were the first to take full advantage of the larger memory space on Cds, something that rivaly games on floppy disks and cartridges couldn’t compete with. It meant Myst was able to use such beautiful graphics and much larger variety of sounds. The games popularity gave a huge rush for CD drives which at the time had to be bought separate from computers. The fact the game was so popular and that almost everyone who owned a computer had bought a disk drive to play Myst, it meant that future games could now take advantage of the CD to make there games. From then on the conversion to CD become much more abundant with games and as you can see now a days all games are on CDs which if it wasn’t for Myst may have taken a lot longer.



Its not hard to see the importance Myst played to computer gaming, from the use of 3D rendered images to create picture perfect visuals, to the use of realistic sound affects the kind of thing at the time only used in movies, to original music soundtrack and the fact that it brought and was able to utilise the CD for gaming, there was no other option but to class MYST as a cannon game. It for ever changed how games were presented through visuals and audio and the way in which we received our game through CDs.





[1] http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/269/

[2] http://www.nowgamer.com/features/224/the-making-of-myst?o=0#listing

[3] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/09/dayintech_0924

[4] http://www.techgnosis.com/index_myst.html

[5] http://mystolgia.angelfire.com/myst.htm