But it offers an interesting portrait of a Cyan I narrowly missed. Some of the things were unchanged by the time I got there, and others changed greatly. Bonnie did leave, as one gets the feeling from the article she would, and Josh Staub finally did get the Art Directorship one gets the feeling he wanted and had been promised.
One thing that did not change was Cyan’s fanatical devotion to Art in videogames. It was so nice to be in an environment where Art and the Artistic Process were taken seriously. I took for granted that all game company art departments operated like that, but in fact this devotion to quality was one of the things that made Cyan different from most.
The changes you can see already under way in the article were in full swing by the time I got there, so I worked for the company Cyan became next. But I still wonder what it would have been like to work for the Cyan described in this article. I got to see the last fading echoes of that version of the company, and it was still pretty sweet.
I know nothing about the game, but I love the art.
Myst and Riven were such amazing games. You basically got to wander around a beautiful environment solving puzzles. Best of all, it was based on a narrative.
Many writers and would-be writers flocked to the games, drawn by their pseudo-literate underpinnings. It was a magical time…