Myst creator warns of over ambition in MMO space

GamesIndustry.Biz writes: "At a panel discussion at the Austin GDC, Myst creator Rand Miller gave his audience a look behind the scenes why his URU: Myst Online MMO has failed commercially not once but twice, summing up its failure by saying "it's frankly cheaper to build a treadmill than a national park. We were building a national park."

Rather than "setting people in a hamster wheel and saying 'run run run run run'," explained Miller, developer Cyan said it wasn't approaching URU as a "game in the traditional sense" but as something that "had the potential of competing with television." Rather than "what you would watch that night," Miller said the team saw potential to continually produce new worlds and shift the entertainment paradigm to 'where would you go that night.'"