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Obsessions Imagine yourself immersed in a visually dynamic world - all you have is the clothes on your back, a linking book and the knowledge of what you are to do. You have just entered the world of the D'ni, the world of Cyan. Anyone who has ever played one of Cyan's games knows that once you have entered into their realm, there is no coming back. One critic writes: "As I pointed-and-clicked my way through this tropical paradise, I found myself wishing that Riven was a place that I could visit in real life." This obsessive draw was the goal of Cyan's creators. Rand Miller, - one of the founding fathers, states: "More than anything we want to create worlds that draw you in." And, "draw fans in" is exactly what the company has done. There are countless millions of Cyan's games being sold every year. By the end of 1993, the year that Myst was released, the company had sold 3.5 million independent copies. It was the first game to push Dune out of the number one gaming position. There were numerous awards being won by the company in all fields of computing and multimedia. To date, sixty-seven awards have been won by Cyan for the four games that the company has produced. However, the company's history has not always been so glamorous.
Cyan's history began in the early eighties. The Rand brothers, sons of a preacher named Ron Miller, were living a profoundly different existence. Rand worked as a computer programmer for The Citizen's National Bank in Texas, and Robyn was a student of Anthropology at the University of Washington. Robyn spent most of his time drawing pictures of strange worlds and designing even stranger music. It was only when Rand, a father, decided that he wanted to produce high quality children's software that the idea of Cyan began to grow. Rand called up his younger brother Robyn, the more creative of his siblings, and said he had an idea for a computer game for kids. He thought that Robyn could illustrate it. Robyn took Rand's narrative and turned it into an atmosphere. The Manhole was born in 1988. It was seen as being ground breaking in the world of interactivity. Never before had a game been so user friendly, so non-threatening, and so non-violent. A CD-ROM version of the game was released the same year. This is considered to be the first entertainment CD-ROM ever released. This inspired the brothers to release another game - and Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel, which was also a huge success.
After working in the children's entertainment industry for a few years, the couple decided that it was time to work on other things. Robyn Miller states: "The time we spent working on the early children's projects was mostly a time of exploration and experimentation for us. We had stumbled across a new medium and we wanted to see what it could do. But finally, we were ready to meet the challenge of creating a world that appealed to 'grown-ups'--we were ready to make the player the main character of an interactive story." So, in the basement of Robyn's house, they began delving in the world of the D'ni - and Myst was born. The gaming industry was turned upside-down. Jon Carroll, a writer for Wired magazine, writes: "...the odd success of Myst had made a lot of high-powered gaming executives look dumb." Cyan created a world that was non-threatening, interactive and a world where players could work at their own pace. This was something new in the gaming industry. In the years since Myst was released, it has sold approximately 5 million copies worldwide, making it the best selling CD-ROM game of all time. The project was completely self-funded - the group received no money from Broderbund or any other outside group. It has received thirty-eight awards and has been used as an example of creative computer wizardry. Nevertheless, this was not the end of the realm of the D'ni.
The precedent that was set with the release of Myst created an even bigger expectation for sequel to this game - initially called Myst II. The public and the computing industry were expecting Cyan to produce a bigger, stronger, faster game. Cyan realized that the expectation was suddenly too much for them. They needed to bring in an outsider, one who would bring new blood, fresh ideas and computing mastery to the company. So, they brought Richard Vander Wende into the Cyan family. Richard, in previous years, had worked for Industrial Light and Magic and for Disney. He had years of experience and some very interesting ideas on what should be incorporated into the Cyan games - especially Riven. He states: "...that the players (of Riven) should take responsibility for their judgments. The choices shouldn't be so easy. They should have to decide what their values are. That's the point of its being interactive; as a designer, you have that freedom." In the later months of 1997, the release of Riven marked the end of a long and laborious three and a half years by the Cyan team. It was worth the effort. This can be demonstrated in the response received by the public over the game. Kate Hedstrom, the Public Relations manager for Red Orb Entertainment writes: "Riven reached the "one million units sold" mark faster than any other package in software history, with the exception of Windows95, and continues to stay in the "top ten" lists of software sold. It has already won several awards, and has raised interest in the world of D'ni to new levels." Right now, many in anthropological and computing circles study the D'ni religion, language and culture - people care about the D'ni and they care about the games.
After the release of Riven, when asked what the future plans for Cyan would be, Rand Miller quoted: "I think we'll all take a break, and then I think we'll all do something together. I hope so, if you want to know my preference. But I'd be happy either way. Cyan could become a skeleton kind of thing, and I could do that. But Robyn is a world-builder; that's what he does. I'll wait and see what world Robyn wants to build." Maybe this was an allusion to the fact that his brother Robyn was toying with the idea of leaving the company to move on to bigger, better and more creative things. Just months after the release of Riven, Robyn announced he was leaving the company and forming his own called Land of Point. Both Cyan and Land of Point have expressed an interest in collaborating with one another. So, be assured that the realm of Myst and subsequently the worlds of Cyan will not cease to exist.
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