Computer games were, at one time, unified. We didn’t even have the term “casual game” in 1993, let alone the idea that a first-person shooter (then an unnamed genre) could be considered a “hardcore title.” There were people who played computer games, and people who didn’t. People who got way into golf or Harpoon or hearts or text adventures — those were the “hardcore” players, in that they played their chosen field obsessively.
When Myst and the CD-ROM finally broached the mass market, this ecosystem was disrupted. Myst had, Robyn Miller makes clear, been designed to appeal to non-gamers. It sold to them. Enthusiast magazines like Computer Gaming World couldn’t set the taste for the industry anymore: there were millions buying games who didn’t read these magazines. An entirely new breed of player. In this situation, what could be more natural than concocting an us-and-them formula? In a very real way, it was already true.
The great narrative of Myst is that the “hardcore” game press and playerbase lambasted it when it launched. Disowned it. A slideshow, they called it. Abstruse, idiotic puzzles; pretty graphics and not much depth. “Critics and hardcore game players universally panned it as a slide-show that had little actual gameplay interaction”, claimed PC Gamer’s Michael Wolf in 2001.That same year, a columnist for Maximum PC recalled Myst as a “tedious code-breaking and switch-throwing mess”, and saw its then-new remake realMYST as “a pointed reminder of why the press dumped on the original so heavily when it came out.” | Računarske igre su svojevremeno bile objedinjene. Nismo ni imali pojam „ležerna igra” 1993. godine, a kamoli ideju da se pucačina iz prvog lica (tada neimenovani žanr) može smatrati „hardcore titulom”. Postojali su ljudi koji su igrali računarske igre, i oni koji ih nisu igrali. Ljudi koji su duboko zašli u golf, Harpun, igru sa srcima ili u tekstualne avanture – to su bili „hardcore” igrači, jer su opsesivno igrali svoju izabranu oblast. Kada su se Myst i CD-ROM konačno proširili na masovno tržište, ovaj ekosistem je poremećen. Myst je, kako je Robin Miler razjasnio, dizajniran tako da privuče one koji nisu igrači. Prodavao se upravo njima. Časopisi entuzijasta poput Computer Gaming World više nisu mogli da postavljaju trend u industriji: milioni ljudi koji nisu čitali ove časopise su kupovali igre. To je bila potpuno nova vrsta igrača. U ovoj situaciji, šta može biti prirodnije od izmišljanja formule za nas i za njih? Na sasvim realan način, to se već obistinilo. Sjajan narativ igre Myst je da su je „hardcore” štampa posvećena igrama i baza igrača oštro kritikovali kada je lansirana. Odrekli su je se. Nazvali su je projekcijom slajdova sa besmislenim, idiotskim zagonetkama i lepom grafikom bez mnogo dubine. „Kritičari i „hardcore” igrači univerzalno su je prikazivali kao prezentaciju koja je imala malo stvarne interakcije u igranju”, tvrdio je Majkl Volf iz časopisa PC Gamer 2001. godine. Iste godine, kolumnista časopisa Maximum PC, prozvao je Myst „dosadnim razbijanjem kodova i neredom prebacivanja prekidača”, a tadašnji novi rimejk igre, realMYST, video je kao „istaknuti podsetnik na to zašto se štampa tako jako ustremila na original kada je on izašao”. |