I thought my Kairos friends might be interested to know that one of the world's premier developers of graphical adventure games--Cyan Worlds, Inc.--has been hemorrhaging employees and is giving every indication of going out of business. Cyan is famous for its uber-popular Myst series, the first of which was until recently the best-selling game of all time. Cyan dramatically simplified the graphical adventure game's interface to the point where it was literally point-and-click. Players carried no inventory and the avatar was never directly identified (It's You!), at least until URU, a rather poor entry in the series. The series was also noted for its gorgeous graphics, effective use of live video, inspired puzzles, and intriguing stories. The basic conceit was that a race (surprisingly human-like), had developed a way of "writing worlds," or books that people could enter simply by pressing their pages. The games also feature prominently in much new media discourse, where scholars like Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin enjoy identifying all the types of remediation going on here--books, television, film, games--there is seemingly no medium that Myst and Riven didn't remediate somehow.

Has anyone here played Myst? What are your impressions of the game and the company?