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.” | Nekada, kompjuterske igrice su bile ujedinjene. Termin „obična igrica“ nije ni postojao 1993. godine, a kamoli ideja da se igrica sa pucačem kojeg predstavlja korisnik (žanr koji u to doba nije bio imenovan) bude predstavljena kao „komplikovana“. Bilo je i ljudi koji su igrali igrice i onih koji nisu. Ljudi koji su igrali golf, Harpun ili srca ili tekstualne avanture – bili su „okoreli“ igrači, jer su opsesivno igrali u svojim izabranim poljima. Kada su Mist (engl. Myst) i CD-Rom postali dostupni na tržištu za široke mase, ekosistem se poremetio. Mist je, kako Robin Miler objašnjava, bio dizajniran da bude privlačan onima koji nisu igrali igrice. Njima su ga prodavali. Entuzijastički magazini poput Sveta Kompjuterskih igara (engl. Computer Gaming World) nisu više mogli da postavljaju standarde za industriju: već su milioni ljudi koji ne čitaju takve magazine kupovali igrice. Oni su bili potpuno nova vrsta igrača. U ovoj situaciji, šta je prirodnije od stvaranja formule mi i oni? I na veoma realističan način, to je već bilo tačno. Velika priča Mist-a je ta da pri pokretanju „okorela“ igrica pritiska i izbija baza igrača. Odbacuje je. Zvali su to prezentacijom. Neupadljive, glupe zagonetke; lepa grafika, bez mnogo dubine. „Kritičari i okoreli igrači uglavnom su kritikovali prezentaciju koja je imala malo prave interakcije.“, tvrdio je igrač igrica na kompjuteru Majkl Vulf (engl. Michael Wolf) 2001. godine. Iste te godine, pisac rubrike za Maksimum PC-a (engl. Maximum PC) sećao se Mist-a kao „dosadnog nereda razbijenog koda i razbacanih prekidača“, a njihovu tada novu verziju realMyst kao „istaknut podsetnik zašto je štampa tako teško osudila original kada je izašao u prodaju“. |