Archive: September, 2008

Just a quick post to note today, Sept 24, is the 15th anniversary of the first major CD-Rom based game, Myst. Developed in the Pacific Northwest, the company that produced Myst, Cyan Worlds, based their programming, animation and sales divisions here in Victoria BC. Myst was, at one time, the most popular video game on the market. It eventually sold over 6-million units, a record it held until the Sims surpassed it in 2002.

Myst’s contributions to the gaming and computing worlds are numerous. Graphically, Myst went beyond what anyone at the time had ever seen. In order to produce such clarity, Myst relied on what was then a rather exotic computer component, a CD-Rom drive.

As time moved on and Myst’s popularity faded in the face of more intense video games, the offices and technologies housed in Victoria were sold to Disney Interactive and soon after moved south to California.

15 years ago today, the first disc of Myst was released. Cyan Worlds and Myst can be credited with jump-starting the IT industry here in Victoria BC. The rest is history.