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. | Richard A. Watson Interview What is your official title? That's an interesting question. It may be surprising how much official titles have in common with a thousand dollar bill... at the moment I have neither. :) Though I am often referred to as Cyan's "D'ni Historian", which suits me fine. What are your responsibilities? That's another interesting question. It may be surprising how much responsibilities have with in common with a thousand dollar bill... I'm kidding. I have had many various responsibilities over the years working here at Cyan. In the beginning, it was manly helping with the HyperCard scripting - helping on Myst, Cosmic Osmo, Spelunx, the Manhole Masterpiece Edition, Riven, and other HyperCard utilities we used around the office. I've entered registration card information for Manhole and Osmo, I've helped answer the phones, fan mail, email, etc. You are best none in the online community as RAWA. I assume that stands for Richard A. Watson. You assume correctly. Do you go by Richard or RAWA around the office? Most of the people hired before or during Riven call me "Rich" (so as not to be confused with Richard Vander Wende, who went by "Richard"). Most hired after Riven tend to call me "RAWA". What is your favorite D'ni animal. I'm guessing you mean from what we see in the game... Technically, it's Rivenese, not D'ni, but I _really_ like the ytrams (the poisonous frogs in Riven). Tell me more about the change from Cyan, Inc. to Cyan Worlds, Inc. There's not much to say about it. The change is being made for business reasons, but has little if any real effect on what we do or how we do it. It's okay if I refer to Cyan Worlds as Cyan, right? Yes, that's why the names are so similar. As far as the fans are concerned (or we employees, for that matter) the change has little effect on anything. I imagine Cyan receives many resumes for employment at Cyan Worlds. Could you find out about what percent actually joins the team? I don't know the actual numbers, but the percentage is rather small. We get resumes pretty much daily, but we're only up to about 50 employees. How long was realMYST in production? About two years, the first year mostly by Sunsoft, the second year mostly by us. When building realMYST how much modeling had to be done? Meaning, how much of the old Myst files were saved and used in realMYST and much had to be done over again. Everything was remodeled / re-textured from scratch, using the original Myst models for reference. Why was it decided to release Myst Masterpiece and then realMYST? Masterpiece seems like a waste of time and money to some people. There are several reasons for this. The first is that when Myst Masterpiece was made, there weren't plans for realMYST. Secondly, Myst Masterpiece was done by our publisher, not by us. But Myst Masterpiece is far from a waste of time/money. The two versions are aimed at two different kinds of people. Myst Masterpiece used all the highest quality of the original Myst assets, very little was "new", it was just higher quality than was playable on even the higher end machines in 1992 and 1993. But its requirements are still very low compared to realMYST's. realMYST was completely redone from scratch, and has a lot of bells an whistles, but there are many people out there whose machines can't handle it. Myst Masterpiece is for them. Was realMYST or Mudpie being modeled first? Maybe realMYST was done as practice for Mudpie? They both started about the same time. We were doing Mudpie, Sunsoft was doing realMYST, but yes, in many ways realMYST was practice for Mudpie. Mudpie, the game Cyan has been working on for a long time now. You don?t want us fans too much about it. But, It won?t be a sequel to Myst but it will still be from the D?ni Universe, correct? Yes. Mudpie is not a direct continuation of the Myst story in the same way that Riven and Myst III are all basically parts of a single story. Mudpie is a separate story, though it will be D'ni related. What exactly is Mudpie? We already know that it will be a real-time 3D game that will require Internet connections. Can you provide any more information? You've pretty much wrapped up what's been released so far. What disappointed me most about Myst and Riven was the lack of support for user created worlds, or missions? Is there any possibility that Mudpie will support user-created missions? Or maybe even an age/world editor? I like the phrase "any possibility" because that means "yes" is a safe answer, even if the possibility is ridiculously remote. Having "missions" in Myst/Riven really didn't fit with the story, so even if they were technically feasible, I doubt we would have done it. Will it fit with Mudpie's story? We'll have to wait and see. Mudpie is obviously not going to be the title for the game once it is released. Does Mudpie stand for anything? This space intentionally left nearly blank. Any idea when Mudpie will hit shelves? Steve Ogden implied that possibly 2003 or 2004. In the words of a 900 year old, little, green dude, "Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is." I'm not even going to take a guess. Could I get individual copies of those Mudpie concept sketches that are on main page of Cyan Worlds, Inc? No, they are not available. There was talk awhile back of a Myst movie. I think I read recently that it?s not a priority but still a possibility. Any new developments with that? Nope. It still remains a possibility for future considerations, but there aren't currently any plans for one. If there were to be a Myst movie who would you want to play the characters? Or would you prefer actors that are nto very well known. Too many variables. I cannot answer this. If a movie were ever made, I doubt my opinions on the matter of casting would hold much weight anyway. Is there going to be a Myst Island, theme-park type thing? Could you explain? Like the movie, just about anything is possible in the future, but there are no current plans for any kind of Myst/Riven/D'ni/etc. related theme-park. Why was it decided to allow another company to work on another Myst sequel? Because we knew we weren't going to have time to do another one anytime soon, if ever. If the fans didn't want to wait for 250 years for us to finish what we're working on for something Myst related, someone else was going to have to pick up the torch. A win-win situation, more game for the fans, without taking away anything from what we're working on. I imagine it was hard for Cyan to hand over their ?baby? to another company, Presto Studios, to play with. Yes, in some ways it was hard, but maybe not as hard as some might think. First, our permission was pretty specific with many constraints. We didn't just hand over the baby, it was more like leaving it at day-care for a while. We had input on the selection of Presto, we had input on the story, etc. So while we weren't physically involved in working on it, we knew it was in good hands and that the baby would be well taken care of. I read you worked with Mary from Presto quite a bit while she was coming up with a plot for Exile. How much involvement did you, and the rest of the Cyan team have with Exile? Rand and I probably had more input than anyone else here at Cyan. As Cyan's D'ni Historian, I helped make sure that the story Presto wanted to tell didn't conflict with what has been previously released, or, even more importantly, that it didn't conflict with info that Cyan knows but hasn't been released yet. What do you think about the Squee in Myst 3? Very cute. :) Will you be getting the regular version or Collector's Edition of Exile? I do not know. Have you or anyone over at Cyan played Descent 3? I'm sure some here have. I have not. Are you looking forward to the Lord of the Rings movies? Yes, very much. What is your favorite movie? Phew, tough call because I like a lot of movies, so it changes, depending on my mood. Today, I really have "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" on my mind because of a conversation I had with Chris Brandkamp this morning. So I'll say that. If you asked me yesterday or a week ago, you'd have gotten a different answer. Is there another warm body at Cyan that would be willing to participate in an interview for D'ni Council. I don't know. I think that's about it. I assumed that I wouldn't have too many question for you. I was wrong. Thanks for your time, Richard! Is there anything else you would like to share? Nope. :) RAWA |