Back in summer 2022, Philip Shane, the director of an upcoming documentary about the computer game series Myst, posted a video on Kickstarter. He was up at the headquarters of Cyan, the developers of Myst, and the Cyan team had dug hundreds of video tapes out of their storage room, containing an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the revolutionary Myst games. It was a goldmine for fans of the series and researchers like Shane.
We saw an opportunity to help preserve an important piece of game history. And we did!
The Cyan collection is one of the most exciting pieces of the Video Game History Foundation Library. In collaboration with Philip Shane and Cyan, we recovered over 100 hours of video from Cyan’s history, from the original Myst game from 1993 all the way to Myst V: End of Ages from 2005. There’s hours of never-seen interviews with the developers, along with the original live-action filming footage for Myst and Riven.
In a way, this collection is a record of Cyan itself. You get to see them start out as a scrappy indie developer operating out of a garage. Then by the 2000s, they’ve become a game industry powerhouse, pitching the ambitious online adventure game Uru.
For over 30 years, Cyan has curated their own history. Now, they’ve let us share it with you for the first time.
Working directly with an active developer to preserve their history like this rarely happens in the game industry. We’re grateful that Cyan opened their doors to us, and we hope it can be a model for the future of game history. Big thanks to Philip Shane, director of the upcoming The Myst Documentary, and longtime Cyan community member Katie Postma for connecting us with Cyan to make this possible.