There's an interesting article about Myst on Fastcompany.com. I can't post links but if you want to see it just search "Fast Company Myst." I had forgotten that Myst and the original Doom came out within a few months of each other.

The article is a few days old, so I apologize if this has been posted already.

Do you mean this article?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90240345/myst-at-25-how-it-changed-gaming-created-addicts-and-made-enemies

Yep, that's it. Thanks for the link.

Wanted to check if it was the right one and I'm glad I could help. :)

Okay, now how about a summary/TL;DR for those of us in the cube trenches?

It's really just a general retrospective about the first Myst game, and how it impacted the industry. It's not a bad piece, just not one I'd expect to see on Fast Company -- rather more like something I'd see on PC Gamer, Polygon, RPS or Kotaku.

I would agree with one of the author's messages that massive successes in the PC gaming market are not necessarily zero-sum games. There's room enough in the market for games like Myst, and room for games like Doom, just like how today there's room for games like Call of Duty and room for games like Avernum.

But seriously, I don't think the author has actually played Myst, or Riven for that matter. Likening Myst to a "casual game" is like calling Patlabor 2 "just another mecha anime movie".

Well, on one hand, Myst can be bested in about 30 seconds, but on the other hand, those puzzles are not simplistic at all.

Speaking of "Myst", I happen to learn about the coining of the term "Mystlevania" (not sure about the spelling), which apparently has been used to refer to La Mulana and its sequel. Basically, you have a game that plays like a Metroidvania, except that a major part of the game consists of adventure-game puzzles, and those puzzles are not easy. (Those games are one case where the "Adventure" genre makes sense, as these games have hard-core adventure game elements, unlike most Metroidvanias.)

But Myst doesn't have typical adventure puzzles ("use chainsaw fuel with chainsaw", "use chainsaw on green tentacle").

I thought the typical adventure game puzzle was more like: use cheese on alarm clock; give alarm clock to shopkeeper, who, distracted, will drop a shotgun; pick up shotgun & use it to shoot bank robber across the street; pick up money that the robber dropped and give it to the shopkeeper so he'll let you into his store's bathroom, where you'll find several rolls of 5-ply toilet paper; take all of these, and use them to fashion a makeshift rope, which you'll later need to climb to the moon...
EDIT: Fixed embarrassingly stupid typo

He would, if the key hadn't been stolen by a two-headed squirrel...