Computer games were, at one time, unified. We didn’t even have the term “casual game” in 1993, let alone the idea that a first-person shooter (then an unnamed genre) could be considered a “hardcore title.” There were people who played computer games, and people who didn’t. People who got way into golf or Harpoon or hearts or text adventures — those were the “hardcore” players, in that they played their chosen field obsessively.
When Myst and the CD-ROM finally broached the mass market, this ecosystem was disrupted. Myst had, Robyn Miller makes clear, been designed to appeal to non-gamers. It sold to them. Enthusiast magazines like Computer Gaming World couldn’t set the taste for the industry anymore: there were millions buying games who didn’t read these magazines. An entirely new breed of player. In this situation, what could be more natural than concocting an us-and-them formula? In a very real way, it was already true.
The great narrative of Myst is that the “hardcore” game press and playerbase lambasted it when it launched. Disowned it. A slideshow, they called it. Abstruse, idiotic puzzles; pretty graphics and not much depth. “Critics and hardcore game players universally panned it as a slide-show that had little actual gameplay interaction”, claimed PC Gamer’s Michael Wolf in 2001.That same year, a columnist for Maximum PC recalled Myst as a “tedious code-breaking and switch-throwing mess”, and saw its then-new remake realMYST as “a pointed reminder of why the press dumped on the original so heavily when it came out.” | Računalne igrice su, svojedobno, bile objedinjene. 1993. nije postojao ni termin "ležerna igra", a kamoli ideja da bi pucačina iz prvog lica (tad nepoznat žanr) mogao biti smatran "okorjelim terminom". Postojali su ljudi koji su igrali računalne igrice i ljudi koji nisu. Ljudi koji su se uživjeli u golf ili Harpoon ili srca ili tekstualne avanture - oni su bili "okorjeli" igrači, jer su opsesivno igrali u odabranom području. Kad su Myst i CD-ROM kročili na masovno tržište, taj ekosustav je poremećen. Robyn Miller objašnjava da je Myst bio dizajniran kako bi se svidio ne-igračima. Uspješno im se prodavao. Časopisi za entuzijaste poput Computer Gaming World više nisu mogli postaviti ukus za industriju: postojali su milijuni ljudi koji su kupovali igrice, a nisu čitali takve časopise. Potpuno nova vrsta igrača. U ovoj situaciji, što bi moglo biti prirodnije od smišljanja mi-i-oni formule? Na vrlo stvaran način, to je već bilo točno. Odlična priča Myst-a je da su ga "okorjeli" mediji igrača i baza igrača osudili kad je izašao. Nisu ga priznali. Nazvali su ga prezentacijom. Nejasne, idiotske puzzle; lijepa grafika i bez previše dubine. "Kritičari i okorjeli igrači su ga globalno prikazali kao prezentaciju koja je imala malo stvarne igraće interakcije", tvrdi Michael Wolf iz PC Gamer-a 2011. godine. Iste godine, kolumnist za Maximum PC prisjetio se Myst-a kao "zamornim neredom koje probija kod i zaustavlja rad", i ukazao na tada novu preradu realMYST kao "pravi primjer zašto su mediji tako snažno odbacili original kada je izašao." |