HN Debrief

No one can afford to make Myst games anymore

  • Gaming
  • Economics
  • Startups
  • AI

Wired framed Cyan’s struggle to fund Anglerfish as proof that nobody can afford to make “Myst games” anymore. The article’s core claim is really narrower: publisher appetite for mid-budget games has cratered as easy money disappeared, discovery on Steam got harder, and investors now prefer either very small indie bets or huge franchises. That part largely held up. People kept coming back to the same market shape. A solo or tiny team can still ship something in the Myst orbit. A giant publisher can still bankroll a blockbuster. The ugly zone is the middle, where a studio wants a few million dollars, a modest team, and enough production value to avoid looking cheap but not enough scale to look like a breakout hit.

If you are building a game in the $1 million to $10 million range, the warning is not "puzzle games are dead" but that publisher money for mid-budget titles is scarce unless you already de-risked the project yourself. Plan around self-funding, tiny teams, cheaper geographies, or a much clearer market case than legacy brand nostalgia.

Discussion mood

Mostly skeptical of the article’s framing, but sympathetic to the underlying point that publisher funding for mid-budget games is in bad shape. The strongest reactions said the piece confuses Cyan’s own execution and audience problems with a broad claim about the death of Myst-like games.

Key insights

  1. 01

    The financing gap is the real story

    The broken piece is not game creation but publisher appetite for the $1 million to $15 million range. That budget is too big for the scattershot indie strategy where backers fund many tiny projects and hope one hits, and too small to justify the marketing machine and portfolio logic behind larger bets. Blue Prince only looks like a rebuttal if you ignore that it was largely self-funded over years and sought publisher help late, which strips out the up-front risk publishers are now avoiding.

    If you need publisher money before you can build, avoid this middle lane or show much more proof before asking. A playable prototype, wishlists, or self-funded progress now matter more than pedigree alone.

      Attribution:
    • ndiddy #1
    • kg #1
    • teamonkey #1 #2
  2. 02

    Cyan’s recent track record damaged its own case

    The article treats Cyan’s difficulty as if it stands in for the whole genre, but several people pointed to Firmament and Obduction as evidence that Cyan burned goodwill with exactly the backers most likely to finance another puzzle game. Complaints about rewards, a heavy VR bet, and disappointment with the games themselves make this look less like a market-wide impossibility and more like a studio that used up trust. That changes the read from "publishers reject Myst-likes" to "publishers reject this team at this scope."

    Do not let brand history substitute for current execution. Backer trust, shipping discipline, and your last release now directly shape whether niche audiences will bankroll the next one.

      Attribution:
    • Ariarule #1
    • samfriedman #1
  3. 03

    Myst won in a very different market

    Its breakout was tied to the CD-ROM era, PC bundling, low friction from being preinstalled, and the novelty of interactive multimedia. That environment let a slow, opaque puzzle game become a cultural event. Several commenters also noted that many of today’s standout AA games are built outside the US, where labor costs make the same budget go much further. Put together, that means both demand and cost structure have shifted away from the conditions that made Myst feel inevitable.

    When reviving an old genre, separate timeless mechanics from the distribution and cost advantages that originally carried it. If your budget depends on US labor and your pitch depends on nostalgia, assume the math is worse than it looks.

      Attribution:
    • mh- #1
    • paulryanrogers #1
    • ramesh31 #1
    • the__alchemist #1
  4. 04

    Modern players want more than classic Myst offered

    Myst still gets respect for environmental storytelling and puzzle design, but by current standards it is short, thin, and often frustrating. People now expect better onboarding, more guidance, and either deeper systems or stronger narrative momentum. The repeated point was not that puzzle adventures are dead, but that simply recreating the old formula is unlikely to break out because players already have richer puzzle games like Outer Wilds, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Blue Prince competing for the same attention.

    If you are making a spiritual successor, compete on modern player expectations, not reverence for the original. Budget extra time for tutorialization, playtesting, and a clearer value proposition than "like Myst."

      Attribution:
    • jcranmer #1
    • kdheiwns #1
    • languagehacker #1
    • casey2 #1
  5. 05

    Art scale, not code, drives the budget blowup

    Several game developers said the headcount explosion is mostly on the art side. Myst’s underlying interaction model is not especially expensive to implement, but once a studio aims for contemporary visual fidelity the team and timeline swell fast. That is why the jump from tiny indie to respectable AA can look manageable with modern tools, while the jump from AA to AAA becomes a furnace for cash and ambition. Scope creep then finishes the job.

    Treat visual ambition as your primary cost lever. Lock an art direction early that a small team can sustain, or the project will silently migrate into a funding bracket that no one wants to touch.

      Attribution:
    • maccard #1
    • swiftcoder #1 #2
    • Theodores #1

Against the grain

  1. 01

    A great Myst-like should still hit

    This view rejects the funding story almost entirely and says the market still rewards genuinely great games, regardless of budget. In that framing, if a studio spends millions and does not find an audience, the game was probably only mediocre and extra money would not have fixed the core problem. It is a useful check on the tendency to blame financing for what may just be weak product judgment.

    Interrogate whether your problem is capital or game quality before optimizing your fundraising story. More budget rarely rescues a concept that does not already create strong pull.

      Attribution:
    • paulcole #1
  2. 02

    The AA category itself may be fuzzy

    One commenter mocked the whole "AA" label as marketing jargon, which matters because the article leans heavily on that category as if it were a stable business class. If the bucket mixes Eurojank, prestige indies, mid-sized studio projects, and legacy-franchise revivals, then broad claims about its death can hide very different economics underneath.

    Be precise about what comparable projects actually are when sizing a market or fundraising round. A blurry category can make a weak argument sound structural when it is really project-specific.

      Attribution:
    • vintermann #1
    • philipov #1
  3. 03

    Publisher money was never easy to get

    This pushes back on the article’s sense of sudden decline by saying independent studios have struggled to get publisher financing for well over a decade. Kickstarter’s rise was itself evidence that traditional publishing was already failing to serve this segment. On that view, today’s climate is worse, but not a sharp break from a healthy past.

    Do not build plans on a nostalgic model of publisher support that may never have been reliable. Alternative funding is not a new contingency for games. It has been the default for years.

      Attribution:
    • flohofwoe #1

In plain english

AA ↩
A mid-budget video game category between small indie games and very large blockbuster games, usually made by a modest-sized studio.
AAA ↩
A big-budget blockbuster video game, usually backed by a major publisher and large development and marketing teams.
Blue Prince ↩
A recent puzzle game mentioned as a successful modern title with Myst-like elements.
CD-ROM ↩
A compact disc used to store software and media, commonly used to distribute PC games in the 1990s.
Eurojank ↩
An informal term for games, often from European studios, that have rough edges or technical awkwardness but also strong ideas or ambition.
Firmament ↩
A 2023 puzzle adventure game by Cyan that came up in comments as a recent release that disappointed some backers.
Kickstarter ↩
A crowdfunding platform where creators raise money directly from supporters before finishing a project.
Obduction ↩
A 2016 puzzle adventure game by Cyan, often discussed as a spiritual successor to Myst.
Outer Wilds ↩
A critically acclaimed exploration and puzzle game used as a modern comparison point for player expectations in the genre.
Return of the Obra Dinn ↩
A critically acclaimed mystery puzzle game cited as a richer modern benchmark for the genre.
Steam ↩
A major digital storefront and platform for buying, downloading, and playing PC games.
VR ↩
Virtual reality, a way of experiencing digital worlds through a headset and sometimes motion-tracking controllers.

Reference links

Referenced games and studios

  • Blue Prince
    Repeatedly cited as a modern Myst-adjacent success that complicates the article’s headline.
  • The 7th Guest
    Mentioned as another early multimedia showcase from the same era as Myst.
  • Quern
    Named as a strong modern Myst-like that undercuts the idea that the genre cannot be made anymore.
  • Dimhaven
    Mentioned as a recent Myst-like example.

Cyan and backer history

Game development and graphics references

  • Space Nerds in Space
    Open source game cited in a firsthand account of accepting AI-assisted graphics and rendering patches.
  • Shadow mapping
    Background for the cascaded shadow mapping feature mentioned in the AI-assisted patch example.
  • Gravitational lens
    Background for the black hole rendering effect mentioned in the same example.

Language aside

Archived article copy