Cyan | Code Like It's 198x

In the summer of 1997 Edge went looking for the company that had made Myst and found it in a pine forest on the edge of Spokane, in the far east of Washington state. Cyan, the magazine noted, had “only ever released one game”. That game had sold more than three million copies, and the brothers who ran the studio, Rand and Robyn Miller, were spending the money on its sequel rather than take an advance from their publisher. Richard Vander Wende, a former Disney artist who had become the brothers’ right-hand man, explained why they worked so far from the rest of the industry: “Up here we can just focus on work, eliminating the outside influences which are so detrimental.”

Cyan has stayed there, and stayed independent, for nearly four decades; Inverse called it in 2023 “the oldest surviving independent game studio in America”.

Fast facts

Founded: 1987, by the brothers Rand and Robyn Miller.
Based: near Spokane, Washington; Computer Gaming World gave its address as Mead in 2001, and it is still there.
Names: Cyan, Inc.; Cyan Worlds by 2001, the name on Uru and Myst V.
Children’s games: The Manhole (1988), Cosmic Osmo (1989) and, by 1992, Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo.
Myst series: Myst (1993), Riven (1997), Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (2003), Myst V: End of Ages (2005). Myst III and Myst IV were made by other studios.
Since 2005: Obduction (2016), Myst in virtual reality (2020), Firmament (2023), and a remake of Riven (2024).

HyperCard and The Manhole

Neither brother set out to make games for adults. “Rand had an idea for a children’s book on a computer,” Robyn told Retro Gamer, and Rand sent him a copy of HyperCard, Apple’s program for linking cards of pictures and text, which Robyn called “like a predecessor to the web”. Robyn’s first drawing was a manhole on a white background. “What became immediately obvious was that an entire world existed below that manhole, and I wanted to visit it.” The book idea quickly turned into what he called “a more nonlinear world”, and that became The Manhole (1988).

Cosmic Osmo followed, and in February 1990 The Games Machine reported that Activision had released both on CD-ROM for the Macintosh, “enormous adventure games on a scale that has never before been possible”. Computer Gaming World was using Cosmic Osmo as the yardstick for a family game by January 1990. Brøderbund published the third, Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo, which Computer Gaming World reviewed in May 1992 as entertaining and educational. Of Cosmic Osmo, Rand told PC Gamer: “We put things into this program that the adults would pick up on and the kids would enjoy.”

Myst

The money for something bigger came from Japan. The Millers had offered a game like Myst to Activision and been told to stick to children’s games; then, in Robyn’s words, “it was Sunsoft who approached us asking us if we’d do a game for an older audience”. Inverse’s oral history of the studio puts Sunsoft’s investment, in 1991, at $250,000.

Myst shipped on Macintosh CD-ROM in 1993, published by Brøderbund. It was built in HyperCard, like the children’s games: a stack of about 2,500 rendered pictures and QuickTime films showing an island and four other worlds, called Ages, reached through books. The Myst entry tells its story. Its sales are reported differently by different magazines: over three million by 1997 (Edge) and seven million by 1999 (PC Zone). Computer Gaming World said it remained the best-selling PC game until The Sims overtook it in 2002.

Riven

Riven came four years after Myst. When Edge visited in 1997, the team was modelling and animating it in Softimage on Silicon Graphics workstations, and pushing them hard. “We created an island, but something wasn’t right with it, so we called Softimage tech support,” Vander Wende said. “They asked how many polygons were involved and when we said about a million and a half, the tech guy nearly had a heart attack.” It filled five CDs. The Millers drew on “African, Arabic and Celtic cultures” for its look, and tried to fix a weakness they saw in Myst: some players never got off the first island, so Riven gave them “a lot of territory to explore before they encounter that initial hurdle”. Brøderbund’s games label Red Orb published it at the end of 1997.

Robyn Miller left Cyan after Riven. The next two games in the series were made elsewhere and published by Ubisoft, which had acquired Myst from Brøderbund’s later owners: Myst III: Exile (2001), developed by Presto Studios, and Myst IV: Revelation (2004). By then Australian PC User could say that Cyan “no longer plays much of a role in the series’ development”.

Uru

Cyan spent those years on something far more ambitious. In October 2001 Computer Gaming World revealed a massively multiplayer game code-named Mudpie, set in the D’ni underground city from the Myst books. Rand Miller had been working on it for two years with a team of about 50, had bought Headspin Technology of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for its 3D engine, and had put $5 million of his own money into it. “If this is truly to become the vision that we want,” he said, “it will be the most expensive computer game ever.”

It became Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, published by Ubisoft in 2003. The single-player game came out, but the online service was cancelled in 2004 after a beta test. “Another six months would have been interesting for Uru, but we couldn’t afford it,” Rand told Edge. Cyan then made Myst V: End of Ages (2005), in real-time 3D, as the series’ final chapter; Rand said it was “the fastest Myst we’ve ever done”, at about a year.

The online game had a longer afterlife. It returned on the GameTap service as Myst Online: Uru Live in 2007, closed in 2008, and was relaunched free by Cyan in 2010. Cyan then released the source code of its client and engine, Plasma, to the fans.

Near closure and after

In September 2005, with Myst V finished and no publisher signed for its next project, Cyan let its staff go. Inverse puts it at all but two of 40 people. “When it came to closing a deal before we ran out of money, it didn’t happen,” Rand told Macworld in Australia. Then another deal fell into place the following week, and “just about everyone came back, almost all of the key people”.

The studio went back to its players for money. A Kickstarter campaign in October 2013 raised more than $1.3 million for Obduction, a new world in the Myst mould, released in August 2016. Firmament followed in May 2023, also funded through Kickstarter. Cyan also returned to its own history: a new Myst for virtual-reality headsets and flat screens in 2020, and on 25 June 2024 a remake of Riven, built from the ground up, with members of the original team working on it.

Released source code

In 2011 Cyan Worlds and the fan site OpenUru.org released the client and 3ds Max plug-in of the CyanWorlds.com Engine (Plasma), which ran Myst Online: Uru Live, under the GNU General Public License version 3. Fan developers maintain it on GitHub.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 67, January 1990: Cosmic Osmo as a family game.
The Games Machine issue 27, February 1990: Activision’s CD-ROM releases of Manhole and Cosmic Osmo for the Macintosh.
Computer Gaming World issue 94, May 1992: review of Brøderbund’s Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo, by Cyan.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 5, April 1994, p. 14: preview of the PC Myst; Manhole (1988), Cosmic Osmo, Spelunx, and Rand Miller on Cosmic Osmo.
PC Player (Germany), May 1994, p. 83: Robyn and Rand Miller as co-founders of Cyan.
Edge issue 47, July 1997, pp. 53–54: Brøderbund and Red Orb feature, Cyan and Riven (Spokane, one game released, over three million copies, the refused advance, Richard Vander Wende, Softimage and the polygon count, five CDs, the cultures, the first island).
PC Player (Germany), December 1997: Riven advertisement (Brøderbund and Cyan, Red Orb).
Computer Gaming World issue 207, October 2001: Dean Takahashi on Mudpie (Cyan Worlds in Mead, Washington; the D’ni; two years and 50 people; Headspin Technology; $5 million; “the most expensive computer game ever”).
PC Zone issue 109, December 2001: chart entry for Myst III: Exile, developer Presto Studios, publisher Ubi Soft.
Computer Gaming World issue 215, June 2002, p. 48: The Sims overtakes Myst.
Hyper issue 123, January 2004, and Computer Gaming World issue 235, February 2004: Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, developer Cyan Worlds, publisher Ubisoft.
Computer Gaming World issue 240, July 2004: Myst IV: Revelation, Ubisoft, due in the fourth quarter of 2004.
Australian PC User vol. 16 no. 12, December 2004: Myst IV review (Ubisoft owns the rights; Cyan’s reduced role).
“Out of the Mysts”, interview with Rand Miller, Edge issue 154, October 2005, pp. 57–61: the “quickly-growing Washington studio”, Robyn leaving after Riven, the out-of-house sequels, Uru and its cancelled online service, End of Ages.
Macworld (Australia) issue 95, December 2005, p. 24: profile of Rand Miller (“the fastest Myst”, the September 2005 closure and the deal that reopened the studio).
“The Making of Myst”, Retro Gamer Collection volume 5, 2011, pp. 126–130: Robyn Miller on the children’s book, HyperCard, The Manhole, Activision and Sunsoft; “the siblings’ Cyan studio (now known as Cyan Worlds)”.
Wireframe issue 69, December 2022: Obduction in 2016.
Adam Morgan, “Into the Myst: The Oral History of America’s Oldest Surviving Indie Game Studio”, Inverse, 15 March 2023 (web, secondary): the founding in 1987, Sunsoft’s $250,000 in 1991, the Spokane area and Mead, the 2005 lay-offs. https://www.inverse.com/gaming/myst-cyan-worlds-oral-history
“Cyan Worlds”, “Obduction (video game)”, “Firmament (video game)” and “Myst Online: Uru Live”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the Kickstarter for Obduction (October 2013, over $1.3 million) and its release on 24 August 2016; Firmament on 18 May 2023; Uru Live on GameTap (2007–08) and its relaunch in 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan_Worlds
For the 2020 virtual-reality Myst, see the Myst entry and its sources.
“Riven remake launches June 25”, Gematsu, June 2024 (web, secondary): release date, and the original creators’ involvement. https://www.gematsu.com/2024/06/riven-remake-launches-june-25
OpenUru.org, announcement of the open-source CyanWorlds.com Engine (web, secondary), and the H-uru/Plasma repository on GitHub (GPL-3.0). https://www.openuru.org/ and https://github.com/H-uru/Plasma