Myst, The Game
Myst comes with almost no instruction. You begin the experience with a brief
cinematic introduction, which attempts to explain why you are placed on
the island of Myst. From there, the rest is essentially up to you.
The interface is very intuitive, and very simple. The player (the reader)
navigates him/herself across and around the island by clicking in the direction
s/he would like to move. That is, to move forward, you click on the top
of the screen. This simple interface could be likened to the effortlessness
of ludic reading: the process by which one explores becomes secondary to
the exploration itself. In this way, the effortless absorption inherent
to pleasure reading is mimicked in hypermedia.
Exploration is integral to Myst, as it is in the most successful multimedia
hypertexts (Freak Show is another example). Perhaps Rand and Robin Miller
put it best in A Message From Cyan.
