Ludus Novus

Cyan, now Cyan Worlds, released Myst in 1993. The work became one of the most influential video games of all time. It made the CD-ROM a must-have, led the rise of the atmospheric adventure puzzler, and is the leading suspect in the death of the adventure game. It was the bestselling game of all time until The Sims came along, and is probably, along with Mario and Pac-Man, the game even gaming-illiterate people have heard of.

The magnum opus of Cyan Worlds, however, is a sequel: Uru, now known as Myst Online: Uru Live. It’s a Myst MMO, first scheduled for release in 2003. Before the game was even released, the online portion was canceled. It was briefly resurrected in 2007-08 by GameTap, then canceled again. Recently, it has been revived again in donation-ware form, but it still has all the bugs and issues that helped contribute to its repeated downfall. Why should anyone care about or play Uru? Because it’s unique. It does things no other game does.
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Myst Online: Uru Live will soon be immortal. Cyan Worlds is releasing the ill-fated MMO as an open-source project. This is great news; Uru always had more potential than its codebase and its funding allowed. However, it’s also terrible news, as it seems likely that Cyan will not be creating new content themselves for quite some time. Still, with the likes of Andrew Plotkin among the game’s fans, I feel confident that at least some quality content will emerge.