Category Archives: Special Guests

Schedule!

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We have published the schedule for Mysterium 2024! Read on for details.

Special Guests

We have a few more guests to announce:
  • Mary DeMarle is an accomplished game writer whose portfolio includes both Myst III and Myst IV
  • Patrick Fortier has a number of gaming titles under his belt, including serving as the creative director for Myst IV
  • Sebastien Yelle is now a teacher, but way back when was a level designer for Myst IV
Check out all the guests’ full bios on the Special Guests page!

Schedule

Our schedule is now live! We’re still filling in details on a few events, but we’re ready to release the 2024 schedule to the world. See the Schedule page for all the details.

Unconferences

As you’ll see on the schedule, we’re bringing back a few long-standing Mysterium traditions we’d put on a shelf for a few years. One of these is Unconfererences. If you don’t know what those are, they’re a set of mini-conferences on topics decided by attendees. Pitch your topic and get people interested so they want to join! That said, we need topics for people to choose from. If you have an unconference topic you’d like to discuss, fill out the form here.

Marker Missions

If you can’t make it to Mysterium this year, don’t feel left out! We’ll be hosting an in-cavern marker mission beginning at 3:30 PM Eastern Time the Friday of Mysterium. Curator, Rayne, and Yuki will also be streaming whatever shenanigans they manage to get up to at that time. For more information, see the Marker Missions page (note: you will need to follow the setup instructions in advance if you want to be able to join on time).

Last Call for Writing & Artwork Table

Annacat is still accepting submissions for writing and artwork, but these will close Sunday. If you’d like a work displayed at Mysterium, make sure to get your submission in before then. For more information, see the Submissions page on our website.

Riven 2024

Some of you may be aware that there was a remake just released of a certain Cyan game. Not everyone has had a chance to play it yet so we’re going to discourage any discussion of spoilers from the new game at Mysterium. That said, Cyan’s presentation will likely contain spoilers, and we cannot control every conversation people have.
 
We’re looking forward to seeing you all in Montreal in just two weeks!
 
Annacat and Dan, Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Special Guests

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We’re excited to announce our first few special guests for this year’s Mysterium!

Special Guests

This year we’ll have some guests from Myst IV: Revelation. The first we’re ready to announce are:
  • Meinert Hansen is an illustrator who served as the art director for Myst IV.
  • Katie “Kha’tie” Postma is a long-time member of the Mysterium family and the Social Media Manager for The Myst Documentary.
  • Joshua Reinstein is an editor and researcher for The Myst Documentary.
  • Philip Shane is is an award winning documentary filmmaker currently working on The Myst Documentary.
  • Guy Sprung is an actor, director, and writer Myst fans know as Achenar from Myst IV.
Check out their full bios on our Special Guests page.
We’ll have more guests to announce in the coming weeks!

Last Call for Swag Orders

Reminder that swag orders are closing June 9. We will not be selling any swag during Mysterium, so if you want any, you must order it by Sunday.

Also note, there was a mistake on the swag page on our website. It mentioned the shirts are black. That was from copy-pasting the description from last year. The images on the page do show they are light blue but just to clarify in case that wasn’t clear.

Policy Update

There’s a small change to the Conduct section of our policies. Please take a look as it will apply during this year’s Mysterium.

More special guests and this year’s schedule will be announced soon!

Annacat and Dan,
Mysterium 2024 co-chairs

Rocky Mountain High

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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

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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

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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