4 ms·

This is the hard-pill-to-swallow meme truth. If it didn’t already exist, you could make Myst today and it would be massively popular because it’s a great game.

This is the hard-pill-to-swallow meme truth. If it didn’t already exist, you could make Myst today and it would be massively popular because it’s a great game. It would cost almost nothing to make. Yes, a company can very easily find ways to spend $1-$10 million dollars to make a game. And some great games do cost a lot of money (much more than $10 million). But great games can be made for almost nothing as well. If you spend $1 million and don’t have a hit on your hands, it’s probably just an OK or bad game. Another $5 million or $105 million would’ve been just more good money after bad.

Ekaros 2mo ago
I am not sure Myst actually is a great game. And I mean that as a game which audiences enjoy or want to play. It is great as in sense it did something special at certain point of when technology was available. I just don't believe there would be many gamers with modern sensibilities who would play it or like it. And the more casual audience have found other things. So you do not need the showcase of multimedia spectacle to justify buying an computer...
- jcranmer 2mo ago
  It's worth pointing out that Cyan made 6 Myst games (not counting remakes), and people only really talk about the first two. That gives you some idea of the staying power of the franchise... I recently played the remakes, and I have 8 hours in Myst and 12 in Riven. Compare that to 21 hours in Return of the Obra Dinn, 44 hours in Outer Wilds, or 90 hours in Blue Prince, or hell 35 hours in Terraformental (whose GUI is essentially a text adventure game). Compared to modern puzzle games, Myst is just so short; there's surprisingly little of actual substance there. As a modern game, Myst does largely hold up. The puzzles are still quite reasonably by modern standards (indeed, in many ways, Myst did revolutionize the puzzle game genre). As an example of environmental story-telling, it's still one of the premier examples. But the game is extremely thin by modern standards. And the remakes never did a proper redesign to account for how unrestricted 3d motion requires you to change how to guide the player's attention to key objects (in Myst, the key "what am I supposed to do" letter to start the game is surprisingly hard to find, even when you know where it roughly is!). And puzzle games have never been a strong genre--Myst is more notable for its role as a tech demo than for its role as a puzzle game.
saulpw 2mo ago
I don't think that's true. Games are a product of their time and context; if Tetris didn't exist, do you think it would be a massively popular hit today? I can see it being an interesting entrant in the mobile space like a match-3 game, but not something that literally everyone plays. Like we were ready to be Tetrisized in the 1980s but by the 2010s the vibe was more Angry Birds.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  I don't think Candy Crush is much different in genre to Tetris.

Ekaros 2mo ago

I am not sure Myst actually is a great game. And I mean that as a game which audiences enjoy or want to play. It is great as in sense it did something special at certain point of when technology was available. I just don't believe there would be many gamers with modern sensibilities who would play it or like it. And the more casual audience have found other things. So you do not need the showcase of multimedia spectacle to justify buying an computer...

jcranmer 2mo ago
It's worth pointing out that Cyan made 6 Myst games (not counting remakes), and people only really talk about the first two. That gives you some idea of the staying power of the franchise... I recently played the remakes, and I have 8 hours in Myst and 12 in Riven. Compare that to 21 hours in Return of the Obra Dinn, 44 hours in Outer Wilds, or 90 hours in Blue Prince, or hell 35 hours in Terraformental (whose GUI is essentially a text adventure game). Compared to modern puzzle games, Myst is just so short; there's surprisingly little of actual substance there. As a modern game, Myst does largely hold up. The puzzles are still quite reasonably by modern standards (indeed, in many ways, Myst did revolutionize the puzzle game genre). As an example of environmental story-telling, it's still one of the premier examples. But the game is extremely thin by modern standards. And the remakes never did a proper redesign to account for how unrestricted 3d motion requires you to change how to guide the player's attention to key objects (in Myst, the key "what am I supposed to do" letter to start the game is surprisingly hard to find, even when you know where it roughly is!). And puzzle games have never been a strong genre--Myst is more notable for its role as a tech demo than for its role as a puzzle game.

saulpw 2mo ago

I don't think that's true. Games are a product of their time and context; if Tetris didn't exist, do you think it would be a massively popular hit today? I can see it being an interesting entrant in the mobile space like a match-3 game, but not something that literally everyone plays. Like we were ready to be Tetrisized in the 1980s but by the 2010s the vibe was more Angry Birds.

inigyou 2mo ago
I don't think Candy Crush is much different in genre to Tetris.