Myst was the best-selling PC game throughout the 1990s, until The Sims exceeded its total sales in 2002.

While the name Myst comes from the word "mystery," it was also inspired by The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Robyn Miller, one of the game's creators, was reading the book when the game was in early development. Verne's influence can be seen throughout the game, particularly inside the ship in the Stoneship age.

Prolific film critic Roger Ebert controversially believed that video games could never be considered art. While maintaining his position in 2010, he admitted he should not have expressed this skepticism without considering their future and being more familiar with actually playing them, saying:


He brought up the hypocrisy that despite his views, he did play and enjoy a video game once before: Cosmology of Kyoto, which he wrote a positive review for in the September 1994 issue of Wired magazine and is the only game he was known to have enjoyed. The only other video game he admitted to playing was Myst, which he said he "lacked the patience" for. Ebert also recounted a moment where a Sony employee offered to lend him a PlayStation 3 and a copy of the game Flower, but he admitted to intentionally stalling and declining the offer. He wrote one more game-related article in December 1994 for Wired, in which he visited Sega's Joypolis arcade in Tokyo, Japan, but only briefly mentioned their arcade games and focused more on the state-of-the-art rides and attractions.