Praise Gehn!

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Hello all! We have a few more bits of information about next month’s event.

Special Guests

We’re pleased to announce another set of guests for Mysterium:
  • Mike “RIUM+” Ando is Mysterium’s resident mad scientist. When not time traveling, he is often found building Myst-inspired creations (and presenting them at Mysterium).
  • Geneviève Lord has had a career spanning five different countries across North America, the Caribbean, and Europe. While with Ubisoft in Montreal, she was the producer for Myst IV.
  • 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. He is currently kickstarting the Myst Documentary.
Once again, we still have more names to announce, and you can see the complete list (and longer bios) on the special guests page.

Praise Gehn!

If you’ve been to Mysterium the past couple years, you may remember Taniith singing a rendition of “Praise Gehn” to the tune of “You’re Welcome” from Moana. Last year we made it a sing-along, but now is really everyone’s opportunity to participate! Send in your own recording of the song, and we’ll splice together sections of each video to make a complete song. The more submissions we receive, the more fun this will be, so don’t worry if you’re a bit off key. The lyrics are available here, and the details on how to submit your video are available on the submissions page. Please get these in by July 28 so we have time for editing.

Reminders

We’ve extended the deadline for open mic night submissions to July 26, giving almost an extra week to send your songs in. Submissions for What Would Atrus Build and social discussion topics are still open as well. See the submissions page for more information on all of these.
More to announce, including another round of guests, soon!

-The Mysterium Committee

Stephan Martiniere, Myst Doc Kickstarter, & WWAB

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Greetings friends

We have just under four weeks to go until Mysterium, so it’s time we tell you about another of our special guests – Stephan Martiniere!

Stephan Martiniere

Myst fans may remember him as the Visual Art Director for the URU/Myst Online games and Myst V, but Stephan has an extensive list of credits across all types of media. From games to movies to book covers to theme parks, he’s done it all. We are enormously excited to welcome him to Mysterium this year, and we think you will all enjoy hearing from him.

You can learn more about Stephan, and all of our guests, on our Special Guests page – and if those aren’t exciting enough for you, stay tuned because we have plenty more to come.

Myst Doc Kickstarter

If you’ve attended Mysterium in recent years, you will remember seeing Philip Shane recording us all and talking about the upcoming Myst Documentary. Well, come tomorrow you will be able to back the Myst Doc on Kickstarter! Head over to the Kickstarter page to sign up for a notification when the campaign goes live.

While you wait, you can also check out an exclusive interview with Philip, Rand, and Robyn over on VentureBeat, here.

What Would Atrus Build

A long-standing favorite of Mysterium attendees, What Would Atrus Build asks participants to “finish” a project that Atrus left in pieces on his desk. We haven’t held this event for several years, but we think this year’s online format lends itself to a slightly modified version: We give you the prompt, and you present your creation in a pre-recorded video.

Make it as simple or complicated as you want. Don’t have the right junk or construction skills to actually build your idea? No problem! We welcome sketches, 3D models, or any other way you can think of to express your creativity.

You can learn all about our WWAB contest on the submissions page.

Call For Discussion Topics

Mysterium is known not just for its great panels and events, but also for its welcoming and casual social atmosphere. You’re just as likely to overhear new friends discussing the finer points of D’ni lore, as you are to hear them talking about unrelated TV shows or computer programming. Someone once described Mysterium as “the fun parts of large cons, but all weekend”. How do we translate that to the online format, though?

Our solution: Social rooms on Zoom. Everyone who is pre-registered (for free!) will receive an email in a few weeks with information about when and how to join these social rooms. Before that, though, we need some topics! We’re looking for a wide range here, so don’t limit yourself to just Myst-specific topics. We’re already planning a time for a ‘crafting circle’ hangout, and another for ‘mental health and coping skills’.

You can use this form to submit your social topic ideas. Feel free to submit as many as you want! Topics should be submitted by July 26th.

Reminders

Remember that Open Mic Night submissions are due in about a week (July 20), and there’s still time to grab a t-shirt and help a couple great causes. Also, if you originally registered for our on-site 2020 convention and have not received an email about refunds and roll-overs, please get in touch with us.

We’ll have more soon.

– The Mysterium Committee

Online Registration

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Hopefully you are all staying safe while still enjoying the summer. In some happy news, we have plenty to share about this year’s online convention.

Registration

Registration for our virtual Mysterium is now open! See our registration page for details. There is no charge this year (although donations are certainly appreciated), but registration is required to join our online event. Registration will remain open until August 9, but note for registrations during the convention there may be a delay before you are able to participate.

Special Guests

One of the positives of holding an online convention this year is that we can invite an array of special guests without paying for plane tickets and hotel rooms. We’re pleased to announce the first round of guests for this year.

Remember our guests from Mysterium 2019? Well, all of them are back! That means Russell Brower, Chuck Carter, Tim Larkin, Marty O’Donnell, Katie Postma, and Jack Wall will all be joining us during the weekend:

  • Russell Brower is best known for his work on games from Blizzard, including World of Warcraft. He is currently lending his talents to Cyan’s upcoming game, Firmament.
  • Chuck Carter helped create the beautiful artwork for Myst. More recently, his new studio, Eager Games, partnered with Cyan to release their first game, Zed, last year.
  • Tim Larkin has created music and sound design for several Valve games, including Portal, Portal 2, and DOTA 2, but before that he wrote the scores for both Uru and Myst V.
  • Marty O’Donnell is best known for the Halo soundtrack, but of course Myst fans know him as the sound designer for Riven.
  • Katie Postma previously worked for Cyan and Ubisoft as the Myst franchise community manager. She is currently Project Manager for the Myst Documentary.
  • Jack Wall, known for his scores to game franchises such as Mass Effect and Call of Duty, contributed the haunting music in Myst III and IV.

We have quite a few more to announce as we get closer to the event, and we’ll be updating our special guests page regularly with new names. Stay tuned, because they get even more exciting from here!

Hotel Room Cancellations

If you booked a room at the Mysterium rate for the in-person 2020 convention, your reservation should have been cancelled by now. People have generally not been receiving email notifications of the cancellations, so check your Marriott Bonvoy account if you have one, or look up your reservation using the booking reference you received when you reserved your room.

Also, if you previously bought a registration for the in-person convention, you should have received an email from us with instructions on refunds and rollovers. If you didn’t, please get in touch ASAP!

Reminders

Reminder that submissions for Pass The Book and Open Mic Night are still open, as are T-Shirt pre-orders. We are also extending the deadline for Pass The Book to July 12th, to give you an extra weekend to record your videos.

We’ll have more to announce – and more special guests to introduce – soon!

– The Mysterium Committee

Open Mic Submissions

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Shorah Everyone

We have another quick update for you.

Open Mic Night

Last year we held our first Open Mic Night, an evolution of our Mysterium Showtunes event in 2018. It continues to be a popular, and fun, event, so we want to bring it to our virtual Mysterium. Instead of live performances, we’ll be taking submissions of your song parodies, poetry, skits, and anything else you can come up with. We’ll string them together and show them during the virtual Mysterium.

We hope a lot of you choose to participate, and we look forward to seeing your awesome creations. Remember, this is all about having fun. You don’t have to be the best singer or writer – just look at the goofballs on the Mysterium committee performing last year!

You can get all of the details about Open Mic Night submissions here.

Other Submissions

Don’t forget that we still have submissions open for events, activity book pages, and our Pass the Book Challenge. You can find all the details for those on our submissions page.

Registration Roll-Over

We said in our last blog post that we’d email anyone who already registered for Mysterium 2020. We promise we didn’t forget, and we expect those emails to go out in the next day or so. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Myst Documentary

Our friends over at the Myst Documentary have launched a new interactive website. Philip Shane, who is making the documentary, will once again be presenting at Mysterium this summer. Until then, though, we encourage you to check out the new site and sign up for their mailing list.

That’s all we have for you this week. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements next week, including registration, extra special guests, and more!

–The Mysterium Committee

(PS – Don’t forget to order a T-shirt and support some great organizations all at once!)

Mysterium Updates and Taking Action

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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