Hello everyone

It’s hard to write a blog post about a gaming convention right now. On the one hand, we want to get you information about the convention in a timely manner. On the other hand, we can’t ignore what is happening in the world around us, as people of color and others around the country – and the world – protest police brutality and a long history of systemic injustice. We want to make it very clear that everyone involved in planning Mysterium supports the Black Lives Matter protests, and that there will never be space for racism or bigotry within the Mysterium community.

We plan to put our money where our mouths are at the end of this post, but first we want to give you an update on the rescheduled Mysterium 2021 convention:

Mysterium 2021

For the first time ever, we’re giving you over 13 months to plan for Mysterium! The dates of the rescheduled Mysterium 2021 are July 16-18, at the same hotel (Westin Alexandria Old Town in Alexandria, VA) and same room rate ($100/night). See our updated Location page for more details.

Hotel Bookings

The hotel will be cancelling your 2020 booking in the next couple weeks, so you should not need to do anything. If this hasn’t occurred by July 1, we will contact the hotel and update you with plenty of time before the cancellation date. We will post the link to book 2021 hotel rooms at our rate after our virtual Mysterium 2020 convention is over.

Registration

If you have already purchased a registration for Mysterium 2020, you will have the option of rolling it over to 2021, or requesting a refund. If you choose to roll over your registration, you will not be responsible for any price increases between now and the event. We will contact you soon with more details, using the email address you provided when you registered. For those of you who have not yet purchased a ticket, we will open Mysterium 2021 registration later this year.

Mysterium 2020

We have several interesting events planned for our virtual Mysterium, and we want to remind you that you can submit your own virtual event ideas here.

Calling All Costumers

One event we’re excited about is what we’re calling the Pass The Book Challenge, based on the popular Pass The Brush Challenge videos that have been circulating recently. If you have any Myst, Obduction, or other Cyan related costumes, this is your time to shine! All you have to do is record a pair of videos of yourself before and after putting on the costume, and we’ll edit them together into a fun video to be played during Mysterium!

Don’t stress about this. It’s not about having the most complex or intricate costume, it’s about having fun and showing off your creativity.

You can read all the details here!

T-Shirt Updates and Profit Donations

We have made some minor updates to the dates on the T-Shirt logos, and we have opened a new web store where you can order them! You can get all the info about our shirts and store on our Shirts Page. If you already bought a shirt with your registration, we will be in touch with you over email soon to discuss your options.

Now, we said at the start of this post that we’d be putting our money where our mouths are, and it’s time to do just that. We will be donating $2 from every shirt sold through the end of August to Campaign Zero and to Gameheads.

• Campaign Zero is focused on research about police violence, how different policies affect it, and pushing for legislation to enact those policies and to help stop the violence entirely.
• Gameheads is an organization focused on helping to prepare low income youth and youth of color to enter and thrive in the technology and video game industries. It’s certainly a different choice from Campaign Zero, but it felt appropriate coming from a convention about a video game series.

The donations will be evenly split between the two organizations. We’d love to give even more money, but realistically we only make $8-10 per shirt sold (depending on how many we sell), and the money we get from shirt sales is a significant part of how we fund the convention. If you would like to make your own donations, here are some other organizations to look at:

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund

The Black Visions Collective

The ACLU

Color Of Change

You local bail fund (find it on this and other lists)

We will have more for you soon. Until then, we hope you all stay safe and healthy.

-The Mysterium Committee

Alright, this is going to be a long one. We have quite a bit of (good) news to share with you all!

Mysterium 2020 2021

We expect to have information about Mysterium 2021, hotel room cancellations, and registration refunds/roll-overs for you in the next week or so. Thank you for your continued patience, and please stay tuned.

Mysterium: Trap Book Edition

Our plans for an online Mysterium, as announced in our last blog post, are coming together. We are planning some exciting panels and assembling a roster of special guests. We’ll have more on that soon. In the meantime, hopefully this will answer some of your questions about the nature of the event.

Dates

We will be holding the event the same weekend that we would have been in the DC area (August 7-9). Since travel will no longer be an issue, we may extend into Sunday afternoon based on scheduling needs.

Event Submissions

If you submitted an event for Mysterium 2020, we will be contacting you to discuss the possibility of moving it online. If you wish to run an event, please see our Event submissions page for updated info regarding online event submissions. We’ve extended the deadline for submissions to June 30 in order to give you all more time to send your ideas. Unique to this year, we are providing the option to submit pre-recorded presentations to air during the convention if you are unable to present live.

Digital Activity Book

We are extending the deadline for activity book pages to June 30. Any submissions received by that date will be included in a digital version of the book, available for the online convention. We also plan to hold submitted pages and print them in a book for the in-person convention next year.

Technology

We plan to use a combination of Twitch and Zoom for presentations and communication. As always, Discord will also be available for text and audio conversations before and during the event.

Registration

We are currently working out the details of registration for the online event. We will have more information about this soon.

Swag

T-shirts

The existing t-shirt design will be used for Mysterium 2021, with altered dates. If you already registered for Mysterium 2020 and you ordered a t-shirt with your registration, we will contact you soon to give you the option to have your shirt shipped to you (you will need to pay associated shipping fees). Alternatively, we can simply hold on to your order, and you can collect your shirt in person next year, as usual.

We will also be opening up a store page soon to allow anyone to pre-order these shirts. Shirts will be printed this summer, and we will do our best to get them to you in time for our virtual convention (though we can’t make promises on that). We will even be allowing international fans to purchase shirts, as we hope our virtual convention will be able to reach a global audience. See our updated T-shirt page for details.

Pins/Activity Book

The 2020 pin designs will be rolled over into 2021. Distribution will be the same as in previous years: they will be included with early registration for on-site pickup. Also, as mentioned above, we will hold on to submitted activity book pages and print them for next year.

We’ll have more news about next year’s rescheduled Mysterium soon. In the meantime, keep in touch with people on Discord and dust off a Myst game you haven’t played in a while.

-The Mysterium Committee