People now more interested in trapping their neighbors than writing books to meet them.

It's been known for a couple of days now, but CNN's Chris Morris has an uncommonly good Game Over column concerning the recent takedown.

Will Wright, the former God-games-man on the scene before Peter Molyneaux's rise to power beginning with Populous, developed all of the original Maxis titles as "toys for the mind", the Sims being the epitome of all he ever envisioned in the line of the titles. It's not the gameplay that's the main draw, however, according to Wright - It's the framework and the fan customization that really builds the experience.

"I feel like we built a good game and that brought it to the first million [sales]," Wright said. "But it's the fans that took it beyond that. ... We owe that level of achievement to the players."

The fact that makes this most interesting is the lead-time Myst has had on the Sims. Myst, originally released in '93, was pre-packaged with many multimedia PCs at the time, being one of the first MPC-2 compliant titles. OEMs bundled it to show off the newest in technology with the PCs they were selling. The Sims, on the other hand, has only been out for a few years, and it has earned its following almost purely on interest alone.

Fan sites abound containing new Sims models, skins, furniture, and items. The Sims has sold three expansion packs to date, Hot Date, Livin' Large, and Vacation, with a new online version of The Sims on the horizons. As an added bonus, it's playable on both the Windows and Linux platforms.

No! I have to go out and buy a few more thousand copies of Myst!

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Aaron Dahlen - Gaming Editor
aaron@slcentral.com
SLCentral - Your logical choice for computing and technology
http://www.slcentral.com

Athlon XP 1800+ ... K7V DRAGON Plus ... 256 MB PC2100 ... GeForce3 PowerPack !!! ... Sound Blaster Audigy ... IBM 60GXP 40 GB ... Samsung SyncMaster 950p ... Windows XP Home

I bought Myst, but after the first 10 minutes, I realized that I'm too stupid for a game like that

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--Daniel--

Haha, indeed. I never actually finished Myst or Riven, just because I got way too frustrated and realized that it would take a month out of my life to finish them.

__________________
Aaron Dahlen - Gaming Editor
aaron@slcentral.com
SLCentral - Your logical choice for computing and technology
http://www.slcentral.com

Athlon XP 1800+ ... K7V DRAGON Plus ... 256 MB PC2100 ... GeForce3 PowerPack !!! ... Sound Blaster Audigy ... IBM 60GXP 40 GB ... Samsung SyncMaster 950p ... Windows XP Home

From start to finish, having reasonable knowledge of the puzzles in Myst, it takes about three hours to finish. It's actually quite short (Not much longer than The Journeyman Project). It also depends on your eyesight and your monitor's contrast for finding one particular switch in the forest platforms in Channelwood. That "puzzle" made a LOT of people stop playing the game. The others were at least solvable by trial-and-error. This one was more about attentiveness and luck.

Exile, once I knew the answers to the puzzles, took about eight hours, if I recall. I haven't played Riven.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Oh...and I don't remember where this was, but I caught wind a few days ago of the fact that Sci-Fi Channel is planning a Myst miniseries. Definitely sw33t.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Will it just be a sequence of still images? Sorry, bad joke

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Aaron Dahlen - Gaming Editor
aaron@slcentral.com
SLCentral - Your logical choice for computing and technology
http://www.slcentral.com

Athlon XP 1800+ ... K7V DRAGON Plus ... 256 MB PC2100 ... GeForce3 PowerPack !!! ... Sound Blaster Audigy ... IBM 60GXP 40 GB ... Samsung SyncMaster 950p ... Windows XP Home

You've not read the Myst books. The games make approximately 439,452 times as much sense when taken with the books.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I know I got stuck at that puzzle you are talking about....then I FINALLY figured it out and my computer wouldn't work with the next level.....that's the furthest I ever got in Myst.

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing