The Art of the D’ni

Almost twenty years ago (back in 1993, to be exact) a computer game named Myst was released. It was an astounding game; if you missed it then I feel sorry for you. In its day Myst was something special. Unlike every other game I had seen up to that point, Myst created an entire virtual world. You could walk around, interact with characters, and explore mysteries. I felt like I was actually there. It was much more than just a game; Myst felt like a place.

One of the interesting ideas found in the game was a race of people called the D’ni. This race had developed what they called the Art. They could take a special book, write in it using a special language, and then whatever they wrote would become real. By touching the image on the first page of the book you would be taken to the world described in the book itself. You could actually visit what you had written. Moreover, by changing the words within the book you could change the world itself, and then revisit it and see the changes.

It was an amazing concept. I very much wanted to be able to do that – to create worlds using words, like the D’ni. The possibilities were simply mind-blowing! The Art took writing to a whole new level.

Yes, there are authors who write books, but their books are purely descriptive. I can’t actually see the fictional worlds I created in the Stryker series, or interact with the characters. It’s all just words on a page, brought to life by one’s imagination. The Art is something entirely different. As Gehn once explained to his son Atrus, words in the D’ni language aren’t descriptive; they actually make things happen. You’re not describing a mountain; you’re creating a mountain. You’re not describing clouds; you’re creating clouds. The words carry authority.

Then one day I realized that the Art actually exists. People do these things all the time, and I had missed it entirely. We don’t call it the Art, though, and we don’t call the people who do it “writers”, although they do a lot of writing. We call them “software developers”.

You may think I’m joking, but stop and think about it. The words written by software developers aren’t descriptive; they’re commands. They make things happen. They create something that wasn’t there before. Using words, a person can create a menu item, or a box, or an ocean. Words can create entire fictional landscapes, be they fantasy (as in Skyrim) or post-apocalyptic (as in Fallout 3). They can create impossible worlds, and those worlds can be altered by changing a few lines of text. A desert can be converted into an ocean. A prairie can be replaced by a mountain.

Not only that, but you can actually go to these places. You can visit them. You can watch the sun set or a storm move in. You can talk to people, get married, have children, and change the fate of the world. You can save buildings, or blow them up. You can actually see and hear them – entire worlds, brought to life by words on a page. It’s astonishing.

I’ve even done it myself – creating the worlds found in They Key and Final Destination. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was doing something very similar to the Art – creating a world that a person could actually visit, by using words on a page.

One might say “But these are just imaginary worlds; they don’t actually exist”. But software does much more than create imaginary things. Software guides the function of the engine in your car. It operates power plants. It puts the direct deposit money in your bank account. It operates airplanes and spaceships. It can even launch nuclear weapons and destroy the entire world. Plus, thanks to the advent of 3D printers, you can use words to create real, physical objects that you can hold in your hand.

The Art of the D’ni may not actually exist, but yet one can create worlds using words – worlds you can visit, populated with people you can meet. In fact, that is how Atrus himself was created. Myst, after all, is a piece of software.

I don’t think people realize how utterly cool computer programming really is. It is far more than a way to put data into tables. It can create entire worlds as well. In what other field can you describe a world with words, and then step inside it and start exploring?