Cyan's of life

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 September, 2005

Myst developer saved.

Myst series developer Cyan Worlds has fought off the spectre of impending doom (perhaps by locating all the D'ni buttons in the right order) and rehired "almost everybody" according to a giddy-sounding Rand Miller.

Speaking to Dean Takahashi (whose blog post charts the story of the developer far more eloquently than we're able to) Miller said, "We've had a reprieve. Managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat (that I can't give details about yet), so we rehired almost everybody. Crazy industry. It's giving me whiplash!"

Miller's since said similar things to other journalists, and composer Tim Larkin's gone on record in an interview with Music4Games with comments along the same lines. Things may have been tough on Myst V, which was released here recently, but Larkin notes, "As far as Cyan, we're actually back at work, going in a bit of a new direction. Should be an interesting year... That's one of the great things as well as the pitfalls of this business; You just never know what's around the next corner."

In our case, it's a hearty pat on the back – and an instruction to go and read "Myst Opportunities" on page 24 of PC Gamer UK's current issue, which reports on how Miller's work has been put to use in the classroom by a chap called Tim Rylands. Cyan deserves another life just for the warmth we got reading about that. World up.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • smelly #1 6 years ago

    Congratulations to all those that work there. Last thing we need is more developers out of work.

  • Nemesis #2 6 years ago

    GET IN.

    Cheered me up no end, this. Really like the Miller's. /applause

  • Talha #3 6 years ago

    My heartiest congrats and a big sigh of relief for a really talented and intellectually single-minded developer. Since I prayed for you guys the hardest (and pulled some strings to boot - you wouldn't know it) the very least I derserve is a free copy of Myst V.

  • tengu #4 6 years ago

    Nice to hear a somewhat positive story about devs for once :)

    Still have to feel sorry for those 'almost' guys though...

  • marilena #5 6 years ago

    Good news. I'm not the biggest fan of the Myst games, as I'm not very fond of puzzles, but I always liked the beautiful and strange worlds they could build. I do hope they are going into a different direction and do something really great.

  • Talha #6 6 years ago

    I must admit I just have played the Myst V demo and the first level of Uru. What I love about these guys is their refusal to conform to norms and convention, not to mention their sense of the exotic and the strange. Love or hate Myst, at least its worlds are truly unparalleled.

  • Carpathian #7 6 years ago

    Story = Interesting

    Story Title = Genius

  • PearOfAnguish #8 6 years ago

    "Cyan's of life"

    I'll get your coat.

  • DaM #9 6 years ago

    When I started working for a company call CyanIT, I sent my weekly report to Cyan be mistake for 3 weeks.....And they never replied wanting to hire me!

  • Ciaran #10 6 years ago

    Great news!

    I wonder what they'll be doing next. Let's hope they forget online, take some hints from Fahrenheit, and make some more ace adventure games.
    Edited by 1 at 30/09/05 @ 13:20

  • Bezzy #11 6 years ago

    Awesome!

    A good thing happens! That is good! I am happy!

  • speedstars13 #12 6 years ago

    Played your game...It's so boring. Not a fan. So
    I don't know if this is a good new. Cheerio.

  • smelly #13 6 years ago

    "I don't know if this is a good new."

    More developers making games which arent just tired old fps/racing and sports games is ALWAYS good news.

    Stops things from becomming stale (as they currently are in fact).

    That said, after playing serious sam 2 demo, got high hopes for that one.

  • Xerx3s #14 6 years ago

    "going in a bit of a new direction" - Soooo.... Myst with bullet time then? Or super hero powers? Or perhaps it will set in one of those 'cool' (*CO-bwhahaha-UGH*) gangsta rap settings?;p


    Cant wait to play the new Myst game. Hope that their new ideas live up to their extremely high level of standard.

    "When I started working for a company call CyanIT, I sent my weekly report to Cyan be mistake for 3 weeks.....And they never replied wanting to hire me! " - Perhaps the fact that an IT guy makes such a mistake for so long without noticing it has someting to do with it. i dunno. ;p

    "take some hints from Fahrenheit" -PLZ, NOOOOOO!!! All respect for fahrenheit, but they should make their own style games. I dont care that the game speed can be very slow or that the puzzles can be insanely difficult. They should follow their own direction and leave copying to other less tallented companies.

  • Ciaran #15 6 years ago

    ...the puzzles can be insanely difficult.

    Heh. You caught me... :-/