Registration

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Shorah! We have a few more updates before we start the new year, including opening registration for Mysterium 2022.

Registration

First is the biggest announcement for this month: registration is now open! Until May 15, early bird registration will be available at two different rates: Standard ($25) will provide admission to the event and any swag we produce, such as pins. Premium ($40) includes everything from Standard as well as a Mysterium 2022 t-shirt. We have not yet chosen a t-shirt design, so if you’d prefer to wait you’ll still have plenty of time to purchase a registration once we announce that. If you are planning to submit a t-shirt design, we’d recommend holding off on registering, since your shirt will be free if your design is selected. Details are available on our registration page.

COVID-19

While we are in a substantially better situation than we were a year ago, we are not out of the woods with regard to COVID-19. As such, we are planning to require all attendees to be up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations. Most likely this will mean the CDC’s definition of “fully vaccinated” at the time of the event. We will provide more details closer to the convention on logistics such as how to provide proof of vaccination.

Submissions

A couple quick notes on submissions. If you submitted an entry for the Writing & Artwork table for 2020 or 2021, you will need to re-submit it for this year. Additionally, remember t-shirt design submissions are open until February 20. We’d love to see your artwork, and the two winning designers each receive a free t-shirt! See our submissions page for details. Finally, some of you have asked about an activity book for this year, similar to the digital one we produced for 2020. We are planning to put one together, but are still working out some of the details, so we can’t open submissions quite yet.

We’ll have more to announce in the new year. In the meantime, enjoy the season!

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Art and More Art

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Hello again! We have more to share regarding Mysterium 2022.

Submissions

First off, we’re ready to open up more submission opportunities. Event submissions as well as content for the writing & artwork table are now open. Check our Submissions page for details and deadlines.

Pins

You might notice we’re not opening pin submissions this time. That’s because we still have the designs submitted for 2020 and we plan to use those this year. Here’s a reminder of what those looked like. The first is a lamp by Xemylixa, based on the ones in Kirel and Serat. The second is a pinecone from Obduction by laughingpineapple, and finally, we have a bomb from Obduction by Rayne.

Creativity Prompts

It’s no secret there are a number of talented people in the Mysterium community. As such, we’ve decided to try something new on our Discord server. You may notice a new section titled “Creativity Prompts”. Periodically, we will post a topic and invite everyone to submit any creative works you can come up with. It doesn’t just have to be art – music, fanfics, costume designs, etc. are all welcome. The only requirements are that it must incorporate the posted topic and somehow be related to Cyan’s games. We will be applying a loose definition here, so as long as your work is in some way related, it’ll qualify. Take this as an opportunity to show off what you can do! If you’re not currently on our server, you can join via this link: https://discord.gg/xXvSA7E.

That’s all for now. We’ll have more to announce soon.

Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Mile High Mysterium

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Dan

Mysterium will be in a hotel, not on top of a mountain

Greetings from your Mysterium 2022 chair! You’ve probably seen my name on some blog posts and announcements over the past few years, and I’m looking forward to welcoming you all to Denver next summer! That said, we have quite a bit to announce regarding next year’s event.

Dates

This is probably the information you all are most looking for. We can officially announce Mysterium 2022 will be August 12-14, so feel free to start planning! We will be returning to our traditional in-person schedule with events being most of the day Friday and Saturday and ending around noon on Sunday.

Theme and T-shirt designs

Mysterium 2022’s theme will be based around Myst III: Exile, celebrating its 21st birthday next year (so buy it a beer while you’re in town!) with a particular emphasis on Voltaic (think Colorado’s red rock and canyons). With that we are also opening submissions for t-shirt designs. If you’re looking for ideas, aside from this year’s theme, Colorado is particularly famous for its mountains. We will also favorably look upon any design incorporating Blucifer, Denver International Airport’s demon horse sculpture. See our submissions page for more information.

Survey Highlights

Thank you to everyone who filled out the Mysterium 2021 survey. We hope you all like the more streamlined format relative to previous years. A few recurring items we noticed:
  • Rand Miller’s let’s play was really popular. We can see if he’d be up for doing something like this again, as well as adding Robyn to the party!
  • People appreciate the opportunity online activities give when it’s impossible to be physically present. Going forward we will look into some hybrid events that are held both in-person and online.
  • Back-to-back panels are tiring. When we run panels in the future we’ll plan for short breaks between them.

Starry Expanse

We additionally received several survey responses asking for an update on Starry Expanse. While Mysterium provides a platform for announcements, we cannot guarantee regular presentations or updates on specific topics. Future updates regarding Starry Expanse are solely at Cyan’s discretion.

We’ll have plenty more to share in the coming months, including more details about next year and additional participation opportunities.

Until then,
Dan
Mysterium 2022 Chair

Last Call for T-Shirts

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We hope you all enjoyed this year’s online Mysterium! While we couldn’t be together in person, it did mean we could bring in special guests we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

T-shirts

We still have most sizes available in women’s cut t-shirts, so if you want one, order it now from our store page! We’ll be closing the shop on August 15. If you ordered a shirt, we will be shipping that later this month.

Livestream Videos

All videos from this year’s Mysterium are now available on YouTube and Twitch. You can find the complete playlist here (YouTube) or here (Twitch). This includes the Myst Documentary video that was previously interrupted during the stream.

Survey

If you registered for Mysterium, you will be receiving a survey in the next few days. 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.

Committee Volunteers

Mysterium doesn’t happen without the help of our amazing all-volunteer staff. If you enjoy Mysterium and would like us to continue to be able to put on a fun event, please consider helping out by volunteering with the Mysterium Committee. It can be as large or small a commitment as you’d like – even just assisting behind the scenes or running a single event would be a big help! If you think you might be interested or just have questions about ways to help out, send us a message via our Contact page.

We’ll have some more news soon about Mysterium 2022, including dates and t-shirt design submissions.

–The Mysterium Committee

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