As a sort of an experiment, I guess (and also because I know so little about social networking) I’ve signed up for Twitter. I don’t know whether I’ll actually use it, but I guess we’re going to find out. My user name is @JohnWAllie (assuming you’re supposed to type that at-symbol?) if you want to follow me or whatever it is people do with Twitter. (As you can see, I’m quite vague on the exact function here.) Get off my lawn, pesky kids!
A Sign of the End Times
February 11th, 2012Myst in Retrospect: Myst
February 9th, 2012Warning: Spoilers abound. If you haven’t played Myst, I suggest you do so before proceeding. You can buy it at gog.com
As Myst approaches its twentieth anniversary, it’s a good time to take a look back and try to understand what it all meant. Writing now, seven years after the final installment was published, much of the fan base has gone silent, Cyan Worlds (the creators) have turned to simple iPhone games, and the series itself has become little more than a tiny blip in the history of video games. Its initial meteoric arrival is well-known, selling 6 million copies and contributing to the rise of the CD-ROM drive. Its safe, no-dying approach appealed to small-time gamers and its uniqueness to the more die-hard breed. Myst was an anomaly in the video-game scene of 1993, and its influence was felt across the field. Still, many of those 6 million players never actually finished the game, and as we have observed, the series has languished into relative oblivion today. As a longtime fan, I naturally think this fate was undeserved, but as a critic I can’t help but see some of the factors which brought it about. Over the next few months we’ll be taking a trip through the series, beginning with the first game and ending with the last (with three stopovers to look at the novels). Now, if you’d care to join me, I have just stumbled across a most intriguing book…