Author Archive: Shadow Dan

Almost Time!

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Mysterium is less than a week away! We have even more guests to announce, as well as some last minute information you’ll want to know.

Schedule

We published the schedule a couple weeks ago, but just in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet, check it out on our Schedule page. Links to the streams for each event on Twitch and YouTube will be up there before Mysterium begins.

Myst IV Panel Questions

Reminder: we’re taking questions in advance for the Myst IV panel featuring Meinert Hansen and Brian Wrench. We cannot guarantee that we will take any questions during the panel itself, so if you have something to ask, submit it by Thursday, July 15, using this form.

Mysterium Shirts

You may have seen a cryptic announcement regarding a couple t-shirt designs in Myst Online. Well, the second of those is the Mysterium 2021 t-shirt! All you have to do is login to your Relto any time between July 16th and July 23rd and the shirt will be in your wardrobe.

Special Guests

Yep, there are even more special guests!
  • Eric Anderson is a Cyan veteran, involved with Uru, Myst, and Obduction
  • Blake Bjerke rejoined Cyan last year and is continuing work on both Myst 2020 and Firmament
  • Abner Coimbre previously worked at the Kennedy Space Center and now helps to streamline work for the team at Cyan
  • Brandon Collins started in QA at Cyan and moved to development for Obduction, Myst 2020, and Firmament
  • Mark “Chogon” DeForest started with Cyan way back in 1995 and has since been involved in almost every Cyan project
  • Patrick “Doobes” Dulebohn has been creating content for Uru since 2007 and helps others learn how to create their own ages
  • Hannah Gamiel has been involved in business development, production, and programming, and is currently the Development Director at Cyan
  • Eleri Hamilton is a leader at Inkworks Productions and continues to work on the Unwritten role-playing game
  • Veronica Hamilton is the primary developer for Unwritten and runs the game monthly on Twitch
  • Mike Hines helped create the engine used for realMyst and Uru and is now an Art Lead at Oculus
  • John “Marten” Johns originally joined Uru Obsession in 2003 and now volunteers for the OpenUru project
  • Adam “Hoikas” Johnson is a core developer for the open source Uru client
  • Karl Johnson has been with Cyan since Uru as a tester, producer, and engineer
  • Keith “Tweek” Lord has been tweaking Uru since 2004. He also loves waffles.
  • Autumn Palfenier is an animator with Cyan who has been involved in a wide range of projects from indie to AAA
  • Darryl “dpogue/Paradox” Pogue is focused on porting Uru to both MacOS and Linux
  • Katie “Kha’tie” Postma is a fixture in the Myst community, formerly with Cyan and now Social Media Manager for the Myst Documentary.
  • Paul “rarified” Richards is a coordinator for fan content and code changes in Myst Online
  • Derrick Robinson has been in Cyan’s art department for more than a decade and is currently Art Director
  • Bill Slease served multiple roles with Cyan ranging from art to game design to content direction
  • Josh Van Veldhuizen has been with Cyan since 2008 and is currently QA Manager
That’s it for announcements. We hope you’ll join us online next weekend!

–The Mysterium Committee

Registration is Open!

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Hello! Hopefully some of you have been able to rejoin society as things begin to reopen for the Summer.

Myst IV Panel Questions

As we mentioned in our previous post, we have Brian Wrench and Meinert Hansen joining us this year for a panel on Myst IV: Revelation. To facilitate question gathering for this panel, we have decided to request questions in advance. Feel free to ask anything, as long as it’s on-topic. Submit questions using this form by July 15. Currently this is the only panel for which we’re planning to require pre-submitted questions. If that changes, we will give plenty of advance notice.

Marker Missions

Since we won’t be together in person, our usual marker missions involving markers scattered around the hotel won’t be possible this year. Instead, we are running one in Myst Online! If you aren’t familiar with Myst Online, that’s ok! We put together a guide for you. The game itself is also free! There are some steps that you’ll need to do to prep for marker mission participation, and that part can be time consuming, so don’t wait! See our Marker Missions page for instructions and additional information.

Registration

Registration for Mysterium 2021 Online is now open! As with last year, all events will be streamed, and registration is not required to watch; however, you will need to register (it’s free again this year) to participate in any interactive content. See our Registration page for details.

Special Guests

We have a few more special guests to announce:
  • Chuck Carter helped create the artwork for Myst. He is currently working on a playable version of the original concept for the Selenitic Age using Unreal Engine 5.
  • Rand Miller co-founded Cyan over 30 years ago, bringing us the worlds of Myst and its sequels, as well as the upcoming game Firmament.
  • Philip Shane is an award winning documentary filmmaker, working on such films as Being Elmo and The Beatles Revolution. Myst fans know him for his upcoming Myst Documentary.

Check out their full bios and the complete list of guests on our Special Guests page.

We’ll have more to announce in the coming weeks. Hope to see you all online next month!
–The Mysterium Committee

Special Guests

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Shorah! This will be a long one, as we have quite a bit to announce, including an important update regarding the Mysterium 2021 hotel.

Schedule

We are still working out the schedule for the convention, but the bulk of events will be on Saturday and Sunday. Friday content, if any, will only be in the evening (likely no earlier than 5 PM Pacific Time).

Special Guests

As with last year, we will be inviting some special guests to speak at our online convention, and we’re pleased to announce the first batch:
  • Meinert Hansen has a slew of credits in games, TV, and movies, but Myst fans should know him as the art director for Myst IV.
  • Robyn Miller needs no introduction, but you of course know him as the co-founder of Cyan and composer of the scores to Myst, Riven, and Obduction.
  • Brian Wrench now runs a psychotherapy practice in Quebec, but long ago he played Sirrus in Myst IV.
We’ll have more names to announce as the event grows closer. Check out our special guests page for everyone’s full bio.

Event Submissions

We’re still accepting submissions for events, so if you have something you’d like to present, please let us know! We will give priority to events submitted by May 31, but if time allows, we will consider anything submitted as late as June 20.

Mysterium 2021 Hotel

The Westin Alexandria will not be cancelling our room block. While there will be no official events held at the hotel, you may book rooms at the Mysterium rate if you wish using the link on our location page. Note: this also means if you booked a room that it will not automatically be cancelled. You will have to cancel the room yourself via the Marriott website or by phone. This is a change from our previous announcement.

Mysterium 2022

Several people have asked if we would be able to once again push Mysterium in DC out a year. We can say now that we do not have a location set for Mysterium 2022. It is unlikely to be in DC, however, as we will be going through the normal bid review process for various cities around the country.

We’ll have more to announce and more special guests soon. In the meantime continue to stay safe, keep in touch on Discord, and enjoy the upcoming Summer.

—The Mysterium Committee

Mysterium 2021 Update

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Hello! We have a few updates to share, and we’d really like to hear from you as well. Read on for more information.

Registration Flexibility

While things are finally looking better, we are still not out of the woods when it comes to COVID-19. Due to some continuing uncertainty and to allow people more flexibility, we have shortened the normal 90-day cancellation policy for Mysterium refunds to 45 days. Any registration canceled at least 45 days prior to July 16 will receive a full refund.

Survey

Also with regard to the pandemic, we have put together a brief survey to gauge how people are feeling about this year’s convention. We know we have gotten a bit long-winded with surveys in the past, but we promise this one is really short: it should only take about a minute. Please fill it out by April 4 as it will help us make everyone feel safe this Summer. The survey can be found by clicking here.

Reminders

Location bids for Mysterium 2022 are still open until April 1. See our Location Bidding page for more information. We are also still accepting submissions for events, activity book pages, and the writing and artwork table for this year’s convention. See our Submissions page for details.

We hope you are all still staying safe and look forward to getting together this summer.

– Mysterium 2021 Co-Chairs: Capella and Dan

Mysterium 2021

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We’ve gone through your 2020 survey feedback and are now kicking off Mysterium 2021! We have a few announcements to share.

Survey Highlights

Thank you to everyone who filled out the Mysterium 2020 survey. It gives us valuable insight and ideas for future conventions. There were a few recurring themes we noticed from the results:

  • You’d like some additional new panels such as a discussion of the books. While we can’t promise anything since it’ll be dependent on special guests’ availability, we are looking into possible topics. If you have contact with a potential Myst-related special guest, please let us know via our Contact Us page.
  • Speedrunning and Unwritten were quite well received. Thank you to everyone who made those events happen!
  • Several people were unaware of streams and recordings from prior years. While this year was entirely online, we stream every year as best we can, excepting when panelists request us not to. We stream live on Twitch, and we post everything to our YouTube channel after the convention. A link to the YouTube playlist for a given year can also be found on the History page on our site.
  • We received several comments about Starry Expanse. While Mysterium provides a platform for announcements from fan projects, we are not directly involved in them ourselves and cannot guarantee regular presentations or updates. We encourage fan-driven projects to submit an event proposal should they have updates they’d like to share.

You may have noticed a new channel, #feedback, on our Discord server. This is for providing suggestions and feedback, either for the server or the convention itself.

T-Shirts

We know many of you are eager to receive the t-shirts you pre-ordered. Unfortunately the pandemic has made it difficult to collaborate on packing and shipping, but we are well underway. Shirts are being sent in batches, and we are around 75% complete. Please note that if you are outside the US, international shipping has been slow lately so it may take extra time for your shirt to reach you.

Mysterium 2021

As previously announced, Mysterium 2021 will be held July 16-18 in Alexandria, VA, just outside Washington, DC. We’ll continue providing information over the next few months, but to start things off, we’re opening submissions:

  • Have an activity you’d like to run during Mysterium? Event submissions will be open until May 31.
  • We’ll be printing an activity book similar to the digital one we offered during Mysterium 2020. Page submissions will be open until April 25. Note: All pages from the 2020 digital book will be printed for 2021, so if you submitted a page this year, you do not need to resubmit it unless you wish to update or correct it.
  • As always, we will have a writing and artwork table to showcase your creations. Please get these in by July 1.

More details, including information on how to submit your ideas and works, can be found on our Submissions page. This year’s t-shirt design will be the same as 2020. Pin designs were also previously selected earlier this year.

That’s it for now. We’ll be opening registration and hotel bookings in the next few months. In the meantime, happy Halloween and enjoy the Fall!

–The Mysterium 2021 Triumvirate: Capella, Drew, and Dan