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“HOW DID YOU MAKE MYST?”

This has to be the question we still hear the most. So we begin to talk about the production: how we created mountains out of grayscale grids, or how we attempted to create a sense of detail using textures instead of geometry. But typically people are not overly interested in these things. What people usually want to know is, “How did you come up with the ideas for a game like Myst?”

I’m always left fumbling for a sound-bite answer to this question. Something quick and easy like, “Designing a world like this is largely an intuitive process … we made decisions because they felt right.” And although this is true, practically speaking, it explains nothing.

In fact, there was an evolution to many of the concepts behind Myst. Some seemingly odd sources gave birth to core Myst ideas (some of which we almost took for granted). And all these years later, it’s relatively easy for me to look back and see the enormous impact these sources had on Myst.

First, we have to go back number of years. Maybe to 1981-82, when I was doing time at Henderson High in rural east Texas, and my brother Rod routinely

54 Make: Volume 08

got together with friends to slip into the skin of a Wizard — or a Paladin. They’d sit around a big table and pretend to have adventures in trap-ridden dungeons where some horrifyingly grotesque monster or demon hides behind each corner. This role-playing game, called Dungeons & Dragons, was growing in popularity around that time (and still has quite a following).

Every once in a while, I’d sit in on one of these games. They were curious. And fun. These times I played D&D were something like mini-vacations, or in some ways, even better. I could explore ancient castles. Or dig through the ruins of some futuristic city, long dead. Hey, this wasn’t half bad! Especially when Jeff Zandi (who was later immortalized in the Myst-related Uru) acted as Dungeon Master. He told a lot of jokes, ignored dice rolls that weren’t in the players’ favor, and generally kept things moving along expeditiously. This was all vital because usually the game moved like molasses, and the rules were so numerous that they filled up three heavy books (faithfully brought to every game). A bad Dungeon Master spent half the game looking through his books; a good Dungeon Master (like Jeff) would just confidently pretend to have it all memorized.