Author Archive: Shadow Dan

Special Guests

Posted on by
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

Posted on by | 2 Comments

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

Posted on by

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

Last Call for T-shirts

Posted on by

Thanks once again to everyone for making this year’s Mysterium a success! We had over 800 people registered, and our peak on Twitch was over 6,000 viewers! We have a few updates to share as we wrap up the convention.

T-shirts

If you have been waiting until the last minute to order a t-shirt, well, now is the last minute. We will be closing shirt orders this Saturday (August 22), and the next time you will be able to purchase one will be for Mysterium 2021. If you ordered a shirt, we will be contacting you soon, and we plan to ship orders in September.

Survey

If you registered for Mysterium, you will be receiving a survey by the end of August. Please fill it out – it gives us valuable feedback on what worked, what didn’t work, and what you’d like to see at future conventions.

YouTube Videos

All of the videos from the convention are now on YouTube. The official events can be found in this playlist, and the watermelon videos and other fun stuff previously exclusive to Twitch can be found in this playlist.

We’ll have more news on Mysterium 2021 in the coming months. In the meantime, enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

–The Mysterium Committee

Almost Time!

Posted on by
Mysterium is just a few days away! We have a few more items to cover before the convention starts.

Special Guests

We have even more guests to announce:
  • Adrian “Okaydrian” F.E. is a Twitch streamer and gaming host, having interviewed several famous names online as well as at Comic Con, PAX, E3, and the White House.
  • Eleri Hamilton is a curator for Cyan’s lore archival project, and a leader at Inkworks Productions and the game Unwritten.
  • Veronica Hamilton is the primary developer for Unwritten and part of the leadership at Inkworks Productions, now partnered with Cyan Ventures.
  • Claire “Shoom’lah” Hummel’s artwork has been a part of the Myst community for years, including concept art for Obduction and one of the two designs for this year’s convention t-shirt.
  • Karl Johnson started with Cyan in 2003. Having served several roles since then, he is currently a developer, paying particular attention to comfort and motion sickness in VR.
  • Eva “laughingpineapple” Jucci has contributed a variety of artwork, writings, and cosplays over the years.
  • Blake Lewin is a thirty year veteran in the games industry. He helped to revive Uru on Gametap, and wrangled the rights to Myst III and IV back to Cyan from Ubisoft.
  • Nate Lewin has handled sound design for numerous games, films, and TV commercials, as well as recording several of his own experimental projects.
  • Keith “Tweek” Lord has been contributing artwork to the Myst community for the past 20 years. He also really likes waffles.
  • Jamey Scott was the audio director for Myst III with Presto Studios. He is currently the sound designer for the HBO series Raised by Wolves.

See their full bios and the rest of the list on our special guests page.

Streaming & Zoom

There has been some confusion as to the use of Twitch, YouTube, and Zoom. The events on the schedule page are color-coded according to where you’ll find them. Events shown in blue are streamed to both Twitch and YouTube. Events shown in red are streamed exclusively to YouTube. Links can be found on the schedule below each event’s description. None of these items require Zoom to view them.

The third category, green, is for discussion rooms, which will be held on Zoom (think of the un-conferences and casual discussions that typically pop up during an in-person Mysterium). While the Twitch and YouTube streams will be available for public viewing, you will need to be registered for Mysterium, and must download Zoom, to participate in any of those discussion rooms. We will be sending an email to registered attendees later this week with more details on how to join those rooms.

TL;DR – Other than the discussion rooms, everything on the schedule will be viewable through YouTube and Twitch. Zoom is only needed to join discussion rooms.

Also, the nature of an online convention means that we’re able to hold multiple events at the same time this year. Don’t worry, though – all events (except for discussion rooms) will be recorded and posted to YouTube for you to watch later.

Digital Activity Book

As mentioned in previous posts, the activity book we had planned for this year’s Mysterium is available for download in a digital format. Click here to download the activity book, and here for the solutions.

We will provide more information later this year about the printed book for next year’s in-person convention.

Discord Channel Updates

We are reorganizing the Mysterium Discord server with some new channels to use during the convention. To make it easier for you to know where to post, we’re putting everything in a brand new category: Mysterium 2020 Online! The full list of new channels and their descriptions can be found in the #rules channel on the Discord server.

Unwritten @ Mysterium

You might have seen on our calendar that Eleri and Vee will be running an Unwritten campaign during this year’s convention! You still have a couple more days to sign up (please do so by August 5), using this form.

Hope to see you all online this weekend!

–The Mysterium Committee