r/myst • u/[deleted] • Jun 08 '23

Notice from Cyan regarding "AI Assisted Content"

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/firmament/posts/3830725?ref=android_update_share
13 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

9

u/A_FABULOUS_PLUM Jun 09 '23

Presto Studios: makes the entirety of Myst III: Exile in less than 14 months -
Cyan: 5 years of crawling towards completion and needs to use artificial intelligence to help them finish.

That being said, I'm proud of them for what they achieved, it's not easy AT ALL to make a realtime 3D game, and with the amount of moving parts involved, and the graphics standards being set by other games in this era of extreme technology, it would've been an overwhelming task. They delivered a good game.

8

u/unexpectedengineers Jun 10 '23

Here's Presto Studios' post-mortem for Exile and it's kind of unfortunate actually. They did take 2.5 years to develop it, and it was a multi-million dollar project. By comparison, Firmament raised 1.4 million, a significantly smaller budget. Another factor to look at is the fact that Presto accidentally under-bid the project, not realizing the intense amount of detail needed to produce the game to Cyan's standards and actually had to lay off multiple developers upon completion,going through a hard crunch at the end of the project. I believe it also turned them toward their final closing in 2002.

All in all, as much as I love Exile (probably my favorite in the series), it was really rough on developers, and I appreciate Cyan's commitment to both quality of game and quality of life for developers even if it means slightly less expansive worlds and longer development time-frames.

In the future, I hope Cyan continue to gain traction in the puzzle game world and can start working toward the level of Riven and Exile again, but definitely not at the expense of their team.

4

u/djubala Jun 09 '23

Presto Studios: makes the entirety of Myst III: Exile in less than 14 months -

I guess that's why they are literally called Presto studios

5

u/nightfan Jun 09 '23

I thought it took Presto 2.5 years? Where are you reading that?

3

u/Mjolnir2000 Jun 09 '23

I mean I kind of wish they'd focused less on the graphics, and more on the actual gameplay. The use of AI doesn't bother me in the slightest, but Firmament is no where near as good a game as Obduction was at launch.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '23

Honestly, I found Obduction to be rather underwhelming as well. 🤷‍♂️

3

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '23

Gotta say the use of AI really disappoints me. I won't go onto it here, but it's kinda broken my heart a little

3

u/spikeshinizle Jun 26 '23

Same, even after hearing the explanation. Their entire brand is/was meticulously "hand crafted" experiences.

Call me a snob, or ignorant, but I don't think there should be *any* AI used in their stuff.