Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Myst and Riven are a dead end. The future of computer gaming lies in online, multiplayer worlds.
Sep 30, 1998 | Riven was, and still is, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen on a computer screen. From the opening sequence -- in which Rand Miller, playing Atrus from Myst, solemnly announces your quest -- I could tell that this was not just a game but a nonlinear novel I couldn't wait to read.
But after the initial forays, when the obvious possibilities for exploration had dried up and the puzzles were stumping me, I quit. I had other responsibilities, and I knew that I would be frozen safely along the game's path until I had the chance to return. But I never did.
In January, I picked up another game -- Myth, by Bungie Inc., a real-time tactics game set in the context of a fantasy world war. I began playing compulsively. I finished off the single-player levels in one weekend and then hopped online to wage war on Bungie.net, a free service for arranging games. Six months later, I'm still playing Myth -- addicted by the immediate payoff of winning a battle, the increased challenge of human opponents and the compliments of fellow players after a particularly clever tactic.
I have the five CDs of Riven close by, too, but these days I think of it more as an inspiring art object than as a game. Riven is the kind of game I dream of creating. But Myth is the kind of game I want to play. Without consciously choosing to do so, I've crossed over to the side of the hard-core gamers.
And it isn't just me. The whole genre of immersive-environment exploration games that Myst and Riven represent -- which once looked like the future of computer gaming -- now looks like a dead end.
Myst and Riven raised the promise of a mass market for computer gaming that has never been fulfilled -- something that developers are finally beginning to admit. Instead of yearning for more games in the Myst-Riven immersive genre -- where lushly beautiful environments and hidden puzzles are themselves the stars -- perhaps the general audience Myst appealed to really just wanted some eye candy for their new CD-ROM drives.
At the same time, the rise of Internet multiplayer games has galvanized the hard-core gamers. Now they can fire up the latest generation of first-person shooters (games like Quake II or Unreal) or real-time strategy games (like Starcraft or Myth) and not only get the visceral thrill of fighting human opponents but also share stories and bragging rights with players anywhere in the world. They can form clans and guilds, create rivalries and organize their own tournaments. In short, they are making their own dramas and histories -- and unlike the general audience, they buy more than one game every Christmas season.
And where they go, game developers willingly follow. Graeme Devine, the founder of Trilobyte and creator of the bestselling immersive mystery 7th Guest, is currently working on a multiplayer science-fiction war game called Extreme Warfare. He conceived the idea before making 7th Guest's sequel, 11th Hour, and once finished with that game chose not to keep extending the franchise. "I could write the next [video compression] codec," said Devine, "and throw in even more puzzles next time, but I couldn't answer [the question] 'How were we moving the medium forward?' So I went back to my other game design."
And so, without a mass market to justify spiraling production costs, and without the traditional gamers to buy them, immersive games have tanked. Sure, Myst has sold nearly 4 million copies to date, raking in almost $150 million in gross revenues, but the equally worthy Obsidian, from the deceased studio Rocket Science, sold just 80,000 copies and took in perhaps $4 million, barely recouping the roughly $3 million Rocket Science poured into it.
Obsidian wasn't the only immersive flop. The Curse of Monkey Island and the Last Express were other critical darlings that lost fortunes. It turns out that the only big immersive hits were those with established brands -- Cyan's Myst and Riven and Trilobyte's 7th Guest and 11th Hour. And both of these studios' creative teams have broken up: The Miller brothers at Cyan had an amicable split, and Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros departed from Trilobyte. So now what?
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