Very strange timing. It’s been a long time since I thought about Cyan Worlds, that beautiful company that sadly faded into the background in recent years. A quick Google search, and I find that after two failed ventures, the epic tale that Cyan had longed planned for the masses to explore was reawakened once again. Yesterday (as of the beginning of this post). The Spokane Review says Rand decided to turn the switch on once again, even though profit isn’t really in the plan.
I smile, though it is a sad one. This is why I see Cyan’s work as true art, not a fad for typical gamers. A big theme one of my professors stressed again and again is that great art is borne of inner necessity. It’s because you have something inside of you, a message to send, a story to tell, a journey you’ve found, and you just want to grab people by the hand and take them with you. I just wish people would recognize great the output of a great creative mind when they see it, so the artists could benefit from it. It’s a lot like the unrecognized indie musician, who has a lot more talent than the mainstream big boys, but always seems to slip quietly under the radar because he challenges convention.
The Millers and the Cyan team taught me something about art early on, reading interviews with them I caught some of that inner necessity that drove them, the desire they had to create things with depth, things with meaning and substance, and something that really enveloped you versus creating another filler item that became all the rage for a year or two. And as a result, what they created shaped me as a kid. The impetus behind the games was exploration—over and over, I was told the journey was the reward. The path is something to be savored, and the payoff is always rich when you take your time and prepare for the future instead of acting haphazardly (in something of a contrast to the frenetic “just get it done” philosophy of modern-day America). I was forced to pay attention to the little details, to savor the scrawl or the fine penmanship in a journal as something indicative of the personality that penned it. The exotic landscapes of the Myst worlds taught me to open my eyes to the beauty of design in things both in nature and things made by man: to notice the wings of a bird, the tonal qualities of a frog, the drop of water in a pond, and the veins on a leaf. Everything meant something, so nothing was to be taken for granted. The novels left me with this thought especially. Atrus, the main character, is continually asked, “What do you see?” Look deeper. Tear beneath the surface, there is treasure beneath! Reward comes when you stop and analyze what you see instead of racing off to the next thing.
In all this seeing, the Myst stories helped me see God in a new way. That sounds bit strange since, although the Miller brothers were sons of a pastor, there’s no overtly spiritual themes in the games or the books. But the spiritual does shine through in some ways, namely in references to “the Maker,” who is continually reinforced as the source of all creativity. Alongside such references are refutations of the fallacious idea of some of the characters, namely, that human writers of books create worlds, as opposed to them being links to worlds that had already existed. Here I think the Millers show their view of God—one that helped me get a new sense of awe. By using something true about our world—that God is the source of creation and creativity both—combined with a healthy dose of imagination in fantasy, the story helped me realize the amazing reality of what is by applying the truth to what is not. How often we miss the miracles all around us, the amazing reality that all of this is really here, and how much richer life would be if we all got a grasp of it and allowed these “windows in the world” to point us to the One beyond the window. This meaningful, hopeful purposefulness seen in the characters of the Myst story would be nonexistent if the epic were set in a fantasy where there were no Maker, where there was no design, no reason to explore new places and see beauty in the worlds. So the series elaborated in a beautiful way (in a creative way!) that human creativity can have purpose and beauty, and can teach us about ourselves and our Maker, when we recognize that our creativity is a small reflection of the Maker and not something that finds its true source in ourselves.
A step into the virtual cavern is great entertainment. But the substance beneath is what makes the Myst story stick with you. Maybe it will help others learn along the way.
