Oh. Duh.

[avevale_intelligencer]

All last week, there was a signboard up on a T-junction between Westbury and Trowbridge, saying "BINGO FRIDAY 7:30 HERE."

I was admiring the hardihood of our local bingo players, especially in this weather, for days before I realised it probably meant the church hall a hundred yards down and on the other side of the road.

Well, all right, not really for days, but it sounds funnier that way.

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'm looking for a day job, preferably sedentary, that will enable me at least to pay our bills and get food and such. Any more would be a bonus, to be traded off against having enough energy left to write. I've done retail and office work. Ideally I'd like to be paid the national average wage for, basically, just being me, but I gather that kind of work doesn't come up that often these days. :)

I'm glad you're here too. *hugs* I hope things do get better.

Uru Live is an online adventure game set in the same universe as Myst* and its sequels, but in the present day. It was intended to be massively multiplayer, but unfortunately it hasn't been massive enough for the publisher, Gametap. We're waiting for the outcome of legal talks between them and the creators, Cyan Worlds, to see if there's any chance it might be revived or at least kept going, perhaps with assistance from the fans. And while we wait, we plot, we bicker, we pontificate, all the fun things that people who love something do when they're worried about the future of the thing they love.

*I can explain Myst if you'd like.

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Yes, do tell me about Myst.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Myst was big news when it first came out (was it really only 1993?)--the first game on those new-fangled CD-ROMmy things, the first game with decent graphics, and so on. It became a phenomenon.

You (being the player: the viewpoint is first-person, meaning you see what you would see if you were actually there) start by watching a book fall towards you through a hole in the sky, and land on the ground in front of you. When you open it, you see a moving picture of a deserted island full of strange constructions, such as a rocketship, a log cabin, a Grecian-style library, and several others. If you touch the picture, everything goes black, there is a strange sound and when the screen clears you are on the island itself.

This is the key concept of the Myst games: books that actually take you to other worlds. As you explore the island, you find more of these books, and two in particular which seem each to contain a prisoner. As you go through the game you'll find a way to free one or the other of these prisoners. The question is, which one?

The story of Myst is complete in itself, but there are sequels, four of them (Riven, Exile, Revelation and End of Ages), each one expanding on the original story and adding more depth to the history of the race that possessed this art of Writing worlds, or Ages as they called them. This sense of history grows more and more palpable as you go through the games, and reaches its zenith in Uru.

Uru, while set in the same universe, gets away from the characters featured in the Myst games (well, mostly) and allows you to be yourself (or not if you prefer) and explore some more of these Ages. There is a stand-alone version, which was released prior to the first attempt at going online; I think that was a mistake, but there we go. The then publisher, Ubisoft, pulled the plug on Uru Live mark one before the beta was even finished.

What Cyan did then surprised everybody; they made the source code available to their fans, so that a form of online Uru could stay in being. Untíl Uru was at that point mostly a community rather like Second Life is now (only much better-looking); there was no possibility of new content, and most of the players had already completed the stand-alone version and so knew the playable part of the game backwards, but we kept coming to meet and talk and cling to the faint hope that something would happen to bring it back.

What happened was that the last Myst game, End of Ages, sold poorly, and Cyan closed their doors and laid off all but two of their workforce. It looked like the end. Untíl Uru could go on indefinitely, but without any hope for more, what was the point?

(to be continued in our next)

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

That all sounds really interesting (if potentially very time-consuming). It's probably just as well I've never got involved in such things. I'd never talk to anybody ever again, I think!

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I've made some wonderful friends through online correspondence about the Myst games and their backstory, including jahura whom I believe you know. :) It can be time-consuming if you're not careful, but fortunately (?) I have enough responsibilities in RL to keep me from spending too long having fun. Erm, not sure that sentence came out right.

Anyway, on with the story.

At the end of 2006 the news broke that Uru Live had been picked up by Gametap, the game publishing arm of Turner Communications, and jubilation reigned. Untíl Uru had to be shut down, of course, for copyright reasons, but that hardly mattered to most fans: Cyan Worlds were back in business, and we were finally going to get the Myst-based MMOG we had been promised. Nothing could stop us now.

Well, it became clear within the first few months that there were problems, over and above the usual fan bickering. Most of the content in Uru Live was the same stuff we had all been playing since 2003. New Ages and areas were opened up, but many players weren't satisfied with either the quality or the quantity, and said so, loudly, at length, and over and over again. A storyline was introduced, but it wasn't one in which players could really take part, and the characteristic depth that we'd grown used to wasn't there. Conversely, the puzzles that were introduced in the new content added nothing to the storyline, and seemed simply to be there to keep us busy.

As the first "season" drew to a close, we all hoped for better in the coming year. Cyan apparently had big plans which they didn't want to talk about. One of the major developments that had been in the works since the first incarnation of Uru Live was the ability for players to make their own Ages, and this was hinted at for release in 2008.

Well, you know from my LJ what happened on February 4th. Gametap weren't happy with Uru Live's performance, and voted with their corporate wallet. The Cavern's still there till April 4th, and then it all shuts down. What happens after that is anybody's guess...but we didn't want to let go of Uru the first time, and we don't want to let go of it now. So, people on the forums are discussing ways and means, while Cyan and Gametap conduct their own negotiations.

It's not all bad. Cyan that was dead is now living and getting other work. Another friend has suggested in her own blog that this version of Uru Live was never anything more to them than a means of getting themselves back on their feet, which it's done. This suggested to me that maybe the disappointing first "season" was deliberate on their part, because they didn't want to be shackled year after year to a five-year-old concept that they've grown out of...but that may be overthinking the whole thing.

But the cancellation has also galvanised the fan community into renewed activity. New, fan-made Ages are actually being Written for the stand-alone game, and some of them are quite impressive. I'm learning how to do it myself. I think we're more cohesive as a fandom now than we ever have been, and while there's hope that Cyan might, just might, be able and willing to release online Uru in some form to us again, there really has never been a better time to be an Uru fan. Which is a surprising thing to find myself typing, after my despair of only a few days ago.

Also, it looks as though the rumours that have been going around for years about a Myst-based film might actually be starting to come true (http://www.mystmovie.com)...

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling me all that - it really is fascinating how the internet has created/fostered all sorts of communities. I think I'd better wait until the children are a little older before I get involved, though!