Creators of the Legendary Myst Get Backlash for Using AI Assisted Tools on Their New Game

Cyan Worlds, the original creators of the most innovative games of the time called Myst, is preparing to release their next IP soon. To briefly mention, Myst was released in the early 90s and it was one of the first games to include 3D rendered images. It was a point and click game with a puzzling environment with very surreal imagery. You, the protagonist, fall into an island full of mysteries and the background of people who used to live on the island. You are always alone and you solve puzzles to get out of the island.

With the same premise, Cyan Worlds came back from a 30 year hiatus and started a fundraiser for their next game. Firmament is almost as identical as Myst, albeit with advanced graphics and more baffling puzzles. Of course, the return of the original developers and knowing they are developing another Myst-like game does raise quite an interest in the project. It was severely supported by fans, in fact, in 2019 it reached 1.4 million dollars funded on Kickstarter. Now, with that amount you could expect to have a very quality product, made by the very talented people in Cyan.

 

Unfortunately, the opposite seems to be the case as in their latest update on Firmament, they mentioned the usage of AI assists on certain aspects of the game. These include image sorting, songs, sound effects and even writing at some point. Cyan did not mention what sort of AI tools they were using but nonetheless, it is quite abstract from a gaming design perspective. Certainly, we did see the emergence of using AI in games in terms of writing, but developers backed out from that decision right away as fans showed a very mean attitude.

It is quite saddening to see developers in usual getting some aid from AI software, it mostly feels like it is not genuinely their work after all. In the recent past, Grand Theft Auto’s remaster of old games also used AI technology to get old images to high quality. Although it looked promising at first, most of the images ended up being interpreted as wrong and it was caught by players. Now Cyan is probably using AI to get their images to be crystal clear, but including sound files and written dialog too? That is a bit of a far stretch.

Imagine the talented developers from the 90s addressing cheap solutions like AI in the current year, it does sound unconventional and we can expect that they decide to at least keep the usage of the tools to the minimum in the future.

Atilla Turan
Editor, NoobFeed