Interestingly, Cyan’s move to open source Myst Online may help in this area. By offloading the platform related work to the open-source community, Creative developers like Cyan may then be able to focus on developing (and selling) just the very high quality creative content to plugs into that environment.

Sure the pricing model will be very different form what it is now – but it is not as if the current model works for the creative developers. Sure, there needs to be a big enough customer base to make this viable even under this model – but how better to achieve that than pass it over to an open-source customer base to achieve? Sure, there will be people developing free content – but how much of that will approach the quality of Cyan’s own work?

Open-sourcing Myst Online may be a more significant step for the gaming industry than anyone realizes.

Riven on the iPhone sounds fun, but of course what I and a lot of players would REALLY love to see in a new edition of Riven is Riven rerendered in a higher resolution panoramic format like Myst IV.

Then they could sell that on OSX, PC, etc. It’d be awesome. But I don’t know how much it’d cost to do.

Shame that Cyan’s imaginative ideas are being squelched by a games industry that’s unwilling to take risks on new ideas – even really promising ones!

Rand, you’re absolutely right regarding the viability of iPhone for small devs, maybe you can pitch something on the scale of the original Myst – a $500-600,000 iPhone project with some of your really amazingly creative ideas. Y’know, take one of your earlier pitches that was deemed “too risky” and see what you can do to condense it and make it cheaper, while still retaining the key great game design ideas. Then re-pitch it to a bunch of potential publishers. Maybe they’ll be willing to take the risk and not balk at the price tag if the project is made smaller.

(And then of course, when it becomes a surprise hit, you can always remake it on a bigger budget.)

As for the ambiguity on Open Source Uru, it’s pretty clear Cyan wants Uru to survive, but the questions about “will it happen” are in my mind more focused on the survival of Cyan as a company. They’re struggling right now. If Myst for the iPhone doesn’t do well, and Cyan can’t pitch its ideas successfully, there is some danger that the company will die. The open-sourcing of Uru is something that will only happen if Cyan does well financially.

So, the bottom line is, if you want to see Uru come back as an open-source app, do everything you can to support Myst for the iPhone – and all of Cyan’s other games.

BTW, if we get MO:RE instead of the current open source plan, that’s great, too. I’d be thrilled either way, and I think either path could turn out well. If we get to have an online Uru again, and get to make our own worlds for it, we’ll all be very happy indeed.

I imagine Cyan doesn’t lose all possibility of income from Uru if they make Uru open source. If Open Source Uru does well and becomes unexpectedly very popular in its open source format, with, say, a million players, there might be a few options open to Cyan if they want to capitalize on it.

Cyan still might have the option of opening their own shard with their own servers and charging for membership, making and selling add-on content to players, etc, or in some way offering a better paid alternative to or supplement for the other free forms of Uru for the players who have the cash and are willing to pay for access to a stable official Cyan-sanctioned shard and/or a little extra exclusive content.

There’s also the definite possibility that if Open Source Uru grows in popularity, it’ll get thousands of new people hooked on the Myst series – and that those people will buy other Myst games. In which case, Open Source Uru would serve as a sort of free sample or advertising gimmick that generates revenue for Cyan indirectly even though it is not itself a source of income.

Just some of my thoughts…

To a large degree, I agree with you, Alex, inasmuch as having Cyan in the driver’s seat will probably result in a *better* Myst Online, especially once we’re able to contribute our own content to it (it seems Rand *is* firmly committed to user-created content, which makes me very happy). If the Cyan folks feel like things are looking “up” enough for them to run Myst Online themselves, then more power to them – I’ll fork over my credit card yesterday to subscribe.

Maybe they’ll feel more prepared to make that decision once the Myst-for-iPhone sales numbers are in.

About Cyan being in operation, I didn’t think they would’ve just died, especially without telling us. I’m glad iMyst is going well and hope to see Open Source Myst Online some time soon. Rand’s responses were kind of cryptic. I hope it’s still “Spring”.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to Alex, Rand!

Alex, I too would love to see Cyan release it commercially and make money from it and provide new content, but we’ve had to take it on board that there is no way that will happen. Ever. It just does not bring in sufficient numbers, and Cyan is down to the bone for the foreseeable future. The open source release is AFAIK our only hope of seeing any kind of Uru online again, and it looks as if that hope just got fainter.

If it is, I did ask, but didn’t include it in the interview. Rand says they’re still working on it but are waiting until they feel they can do it justice.

Remember that if Myst Online goes open source – that’s it. There’ll be no central control of the creation. I’d rather see Cyan Worlds bring the product out commercially, retain rights and the ability to develop content and improve it how they see fit.

I wonder (if it does goes open source) what license it’ll be released under?