Author Archive: Shadow Dan

Mysterium Returns Home

Posted on by
Hello all! This will be my last blog post for quite some time (you can stop celebrating now), as I am handing off the reins to next year’s co-chairs - although first a few 2022 housekeeping details.

YouTube Videos

If you’d like to relive any moments from this past year’s convention, all YouTube videos from Mysterium 2022 are now available on our channel.

Survey Highlights

Thank you to everyone who filled out our 2022 survey. There were a few responses we’d like to highlight:
  • Meow Wolf went over quite well. We’ll look into similar excursions for future locations. (Chair’s note: I’m really glad people enjoyed this. I went there in January and my immediate reaction was “we have to do this during Mysterium”).
  • Cavern Feud was well-received. We’ll see if we can come up with enough questions to do it again, but regardless, we’ll aim for any game show events to involve larger groups like this.
  • A number of people asked about the possibility of ASL or captions. An ASL translator is most likely out of our budget; however, while we cannot yet make any promises, we are looking into captioning options for 2023.

August Prompt Winner

We received what might have been a record number of submissions for August’s topic of "Travel" and this was not an easy one to choose. However, we ultimately had to go with laughingpineapple’s submission of the three siblings on a trip together:

Mysterium 2023

As you may have heard at the end of this year’s Mysterium, we will be heading to Spokane for 2023! Cyan has once again invited us to their area, and we hope to see you all join us there. We have not yet determined dates, but we hope to announce those sometime this fall. That said, I’d like to introduce you to next year’s co-chairs:

Elliot "Taniith" Borenstein - Known primarily for chairing several Mysteria over the past 10+ years, you may also recognize him from his brief stint in the early 90s on the hit U62 show, "Cooking With Esher". Despite saying in 2019 that he would never chair a Spokane year again, his plan to talk Kelly into the role backfired spectacularly, leading to their partnership this year.
Kelly "Rayne" Coston - Kelly hails from the Pacific Northwest and has been drawing since she could crawl. Her days are usually filled with coffee, running a small business, and staring at her screen until art magically appears. Her evenings are usually filled with husband or cat snuggles and video games. A long-time Myst fan, she discovered her Myst family in 2014 and quickly joined the staff as the primary Creator of All Things Pretty and the Tormenter of Attendees on the Puzzle Team. She and the other members of the Puzzle Team are looking forward to tormenting attendees with brain melting puzzles this year!

Once again, thank you to all who joined us for Mysterium 2022 in Denver, whether in person or online. I’m glad I was able to welcome so many of you here, and look forward to seeing you all in Spokane.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Thank You!

Posted on by
It’s been about two weeks since Mysterium. Most committee members have returned home and hopefully gotten some rest, and your Chair decided to attend another convention the immediate following weekend so “rest” has been a relative term.

Survey

As is tradition, we have our post-Mysterium survey. We have once again dispatched with asking you to write a novel as we did in the past, although it is a little longer than last year since we have questions about both the online and in-person events. Whether you joined us online or in-person, we’d like to hear your feedback! We’d also like to particularly highlight the future planning section, as we are cognizant of costs to attendees and would like to hear opinions on the potential trade-offs we may have to make while looking at those costs. The survey is available at https://forms.gle/xkUTNie9vuoNCPt59.

YouTube

Videos from Mysterium are currently available on our Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/mysteriumcon), and are in the process of being uploaded to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/mysteriumcon). We’ll follow-up in the next post once all videos are ready.

Thank You

We’d like to thank all attendees, since you are the reason this event exists. To those of you who made it out to Denver: it was great to have you in person and hopefully the altitude didn’t bother you too much. To anyone who joined online: thank you for watching and conversing through Twitch and Discord.
A thank you as well to all of our panelists who gave their time to answer everyone’s questions, the individuals who submitted presentations, and the committee members who couldn’t be physically present this year. While some of us were highly visible throughout the weekend (and you couldn’t avoid me if you tried), there were plenty more working behind the scenes, helping plan this event.
There are also a couple names in particular we’d like to highlight. One is Katie Postma, who helped with moderating Twitch, moderating panels, finding special guests, and putting us in touch with the Area Man Lives team. The other is Jeff Lanctot, who handled all the Cyan wrangling, ensuring the Cyan update video and Cyan Q&A happened; as well as helping us contact the teams for Walkabout Mini Golf and The Last Clockwinder.

It has been a pleasure serving as your chair this past year. I was happy to welcome so many of you to Denver, and I’d personally like to thank everyone who made Mysterium in my backyard a success.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Rocky Mountain High

Posted on by
Hello! Mysterium is only a week away, and we’re looking forward to seeing you all in Denver!

Special Guests

We have a final set of guests to announce from Cyan, The Myst Documentary, and Myst IV: Revelation.
  • Eric Anderson has been with Cyan for several years, contributing to Uru, Myst V, and Obduction.
  • Rand Miller co-founded Cyan and brought us Myst, Obduction, and all the other Cyan titles that are the very reason for this convention’s existence.
  • Joshua Reinstein is an editor and researcher for The Myst Documentary.
  • Guy Sprung is an accomplished thespian, but Myst fans should know him as Achenar from Myst IV: Revelation.

Hotel & Transportation

As mentioned previously, parking at the hotel will be free. If you are local and only parking for the day, you will not have to pay for parking unless you leave your car at the hotel overnight. For anyone staying at the hotel, if you booked at the Mysterium rate, your parking will automatically be comped.
The hotel offers a shuttle to provide transportation within a 2-mile radius. This includes the Central Park A Line station. It runs 6 AM to 11 PM. When you need a pickup, call the hotel at 303-321-3500.
For more information, see our Location page.

Cyan Q&A

A quick reminder that the Cyan Q&A will not be accepting live questions during Mysterium. If you have a question you’d like the team from Cyan to answer, submit it by August 7 via this form.

Writing & Artwork Table

The deadline for submitting entries to the writing and artwork table has passed; however, if you have a late submission you would like to display, please bring it to Denver and we’d be happy to feature it on the table.

July Community Prompt

We had some excellent submissions in July, but we particularly want to feature Talashar’s story “Future Motion”: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40537716.

I am very much looking forward to meeting you all in person next week!

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Schedule

Posted on by
Hello again! This will be a bit of a long one since we have quite a lot to announce.

Special Guests

We have another round of guests to announce. Numinous Games are the developers of Area Man Lives, published by Cyan Ventures and released this spring. We also have several members of the ongoing development team for Uru/MOULa and an additional member of the Myst Documentary team.
  • ametist first started building ages for MOULa in 2008
  • Elana Bell Bogdan created the soon-to-be-revealed “Vault of Stories” for the Myst Documentary
  • Colin “Maccodemonkey” Cornaby is currently focused on bringing Uru to the Mac
  • Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn has been creating content for Uru since 2007
  • Amy Noel Green has created games with Numinous including That Dragon, Cancer and Area Man Lives
  • Ryan Green is the Creative Director and Head of Narrative for Numinous Games
  • Harley “Calum Traveler” is a writer, artist, and tester for MOULa
  • Adam “Hoikas” Johnson is a developer on the open-source Uru client
  • Keith “Tweek” Lord works on Age development and helps support other developers in MOULa
  • Mike Perrotto is a software developer and producer for Numinous Games
  • Darryl “Paradox” Pogue is a software developer for Uru
  • Paul “rarified” Richards is a fan content coordinator for MOULa
Again, full bios can be found on our Special Guests page, and we’re still not quite done announcing guests.

Schedule

Here’s the big announcement: the schedule for Mysterium 2022 is now live on the website! Check it out on our Schedule page. We are still finalizing one or two events so it will likely change in the next few weeks, but most of it is ready to go.

June Community Prompt

Once again we received some great submissions, this time for the topic of “Resilience”, and our winner is Harley “Calum Traveler” for the Narayani word “resilience” in pride flags.
Narayan Resilience Pride Flag

Social Buttons

Do you like warm hugs? Not quite into all the unknown people around you? Or maybe people should just ask what would be the next right thing for you? We’re providing social buttons this year to let everyone know your comfort level! They’ll be available all weekend in the con room.
  • Yes button – I’m comfortable with conversations, come on up and talk to me!
  • Ask button – I’m unsure about my comfort level. Please ask before approaching me.
  • No button – I’m not comfortable with conversations. Please give me space.
Social Buttons
Feel free to swap out buttons whenever you feel you need to! We also ask that you please be respectful in regards to these social buttons. Don’t harass other people for wearing them. Be a kind human.

Writing & Artwork Table Submissions

Just a quick reminder that submissions for the writing & artwork table are open through July 31. Check out our Submissions page for details.

Registration

Registration is still open through August 1. After that date, online registration will close. We will sell admission at the door starting Friday morning, but the early badge pickup on Thursday will only be available to those who purchased their badge online.

Hotel Booking Deadline

If you plan to stay at the official Mysterium hotel this year, the Holiday Inn Denver East, you only have a few days left to book a room at the Mysterium rate. After July 19 there will be no guarantee of availability as any remaining rooms in the block may be released to the public. See our Location page for more information.

OK if you made it through that whole thing, thank you for reading. We’ll have more guests, as well as information on the hotel shuttle and parking, soon.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Special Guests Round 2

Posted on by
Congrats to the Avs here in Denver on winning the Stanley Cup, a belated happy Canada Day to our friends up north, and happy 4th to anyone in the US! And that said, we have even more guests to announce for next month!

Special Guests

We have guests to announce from two of Cyan’s partner companies. Mighty Coconut are the developers of the VR game Walkabout Mini Golf, planning to release a new course based on Myst Island this fall. Pontoco are the creators of the Cyan Ventures published game The Last Clockwinder, released last month.
  • John Austin is a co-founder of Pontoco and project lead on The Last Clockwinder
  • Don Carson is the Senior Art Director at Mighty Coconut and former Disney Imagineer
  • Henning Koczy is the Level Designer for Walkabout Mini Golf at Mighty Coconut
  • Lucas Martell is the head of Mighty Coconut and creator of Walkabout Mini Golf
  • Anita Tung is the art director for The Last Clockwinder
Longer bios for all guests can be found on our Special Guests page. We still have more to announce in the coming weeks as well!

Cyan Q&A Panel

Cyan will be running a Q&A panel at this year’s Mysterium. They have asked us to collect questions in advance, so if you wish to ask any questions, please submit them via this form by August 7. Note: this is a general Q&A panel, so feel free to ask questions about Firmament, Cyan Ventures projects, or anything else!

COVID Update

We have a couple minor updates regarding COVID policies.

First, in order to keep procedures as simple as possible, we will be checking proof of vaccination at the time we issue badges. Once your information has been verified and you have collected your badge, you will not need to show your vaccine info again during the weekend. We will also be allowing anyone who registers online to pick up their badges Thursday evening to save some time on Friday. We will announce the time for this closer to Mysterium. The registration table will also be open on Friday as usual.

Second, a number of other conventions have created uncertainty by changing COVID policies relatively close to the event. With that, we will not be making changes to our policies except in the extremely unlikely case we are legally required to by the United States, the State of Colorado, or the City and County of Denver. Specifically, the following will not be changed:
  • Vaccines are required for all attendees
  • Vaccine boosters are required for most attendees
  • Second boosters are not required for any attendees
  • Masks are required at all times in the convention space
  • Masks are not required in other areas
Our COVID page has details on these and other COVID-related questions.

More guests and this year’s schedule coming soon!

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair