Exploring Myst’s Brave New World

“We wanted a true persistent world. If you walk into a room, turn on a light, and then leave, when someone else comes along three days later that light should still be on. There are a lot of games that clean up after themselves. If you open a door, it closes itself. If you kill a monster, it eventually disappears. That’s not what we wanted. We also wanted a real physics engine. If you kick a ball, how far will the ball roll, and where will it stop? In a 3-D environment, that’s been really difficult to do.” Rand Miller —Exploring Myst’s Brave New World (Wired)

While hard-core gamers despise Myst because the world is so static, it’s exactly that stability that attracts casual gamers — the ones who have kept Myst and Sim City and similar games on the shelves for about a decade now.