Posts Tagged ‘some people think riven was okay’

RPS Feature Press "Use" On Every Wall

A People’s History Of The FPS, Part 1: The WAD


“A People’s History” is a three part essay series by Robert Yang. He told us that he wanted to write an alternate view of the traditionally accepted history of the FPS genre as entirely dominated and driven by the mainstream, commercial industry, and to “argue for a long-standing but suppressed tradition of non-industry involvement in the first-person genre”. This is part one.

In 1994, the New York Times filed a review of a first-person game under its “Arts” section, proclaiming it to be “a game that weaves together image, sound and narrative into a new form of experience.” It sold millions of copies and inspired dozens of imitators. It seemed poised to define an era.

That game was Myst and it failed to define an era. Instead, a game called Doom came out three months after Myst — and then it shot Myst in the face.
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Architect’s Actualised Adventure Game


This bizarre story shows you what happens when architects attack: they try to create Myst-style adventure games in the real world. Thanks to the deep pockets of the owners of a 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan, a chap named Eric Clough was able devise an apartment-wide puzzle, complete with original ciphers, a clue book, and various obscure puzzle mechanisms. (SOUND FAMILIAR?)

“furniture and some of those walls conceal secrets — messages, games and treasures — that make up a Rube Goldberg maze of systems and contraptions conceived by a young architectural designer named Eric Clough, whose ideas about space and domestic living derive more from Buckminster Fuller than Peter Marino.”

Or perhaps they derive from John Walker’s nightmares about the return of Cryo.

(Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times. Fair use! Probably.)