Why Are We All Not Talking About Mythic Quest Right Now?
Mythic Quest: The Movie: The Game: The TV Show
The name Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet, is one you may not have heard before, but you've certainly heard of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the award-winning Fox show that critiques American culture through its quartet of sadistic, almost psychopathic caricatures. It's Always Sunny has lasted for 15 seasons, and in that time, show creator Rob McElhenney has explored the topics of death, homelessness, Irish stereotypes, the repression of homosexuality, racism and milk steak to name but a few topics. Long time fans of the show will undoubtedly remember the episode tackling sportsmanship, titled Charlie Rules the World, where “the gang” gets a little too competitive while playing an MMO. This leads to a disconnect between the characters' real and digital lives, as the hierarchy of the fantasy game world dictates their roles in their IRL friend group.
Rob McElhenney's new Apple TV show, Mythic Quest, feels sorta like an extension of this concept, grounding the story of unhealthy investment in a digital product and social stigmatism that results in a real-world addiction; workaholism. This gives Mythic Quest a bit of a different feel than other workplace comedies, but, arguably, the biggest draw to the show and the main reason we're featuring it on startmenu is the unique workplace that the show is set in, a western AAA video game studio. The story revolves around a hectic game development schedule of a massively popular MMO from the perspective of over the top characters each showcasing specific roles at the company including; a maniacal Creative Director with a vision that won’t be compromised, an out of touch writer that has a fixation on the female anatomy, an 11-year-old Twitch streamer that dictates the company’s bonus pay, and a female protagonist that is forced to endure constant chaos in the search of some semblance of job stability.
The show’s release in February 2020 has a lot of significance, as it coincided with employees of Riot Games suing the company over claims of sexual harassment, unpaid overtime, widespread discrimination and a fratboy culture. This was also just a few short months before one of the industry's other largest names came under scrutiny for similar issues, which we will address shortly.
You see, Mythic Quest, despite sounding like a generic gaming-focused show, is a lot more concerned about portraying the intimate struggles of marginalised workers. This was highlighted when the team behind the show was involved in a charity stream for Black Girls Code. This put Mythic Quest in a unique situation, as it had the opportunity to show the scale and effects of serious industry-wide issues to a large game playing audience many of whom would have been oblivious to the inner workings of the games industry. But, unfortunately, despite the show using many real-world gamedev issues as episode fodder, Mythic Quest hasn’t ended up contributing meaningful towards the current discourse of game worker rights nor has it cemented the litany of issues plaguing development studios in the minds of the game playing public. Having watched the show in its entirety, I want to find out why it was left in obscurity during such a crucial time for the industry.
Unlike It’s Always Sunny, Mythic Quest has a rather niche audience, not because it tackles serious issues or only appeals to the small audience of hardcore video game enthusiasts. Hell the first episode of It’s Always Sunny was called “The Gang Gets Racist”, and The Office is set in a paper sales company. Serious social issues and obscure working environments are the bread of butter of TV comedy. Arguably the shows biggest problem is distribution as it currently resides on one of the least successful streaming platforms in the word, Apple TV, which, at the time, had less active users than most mildly popular Steam games.
This does actually look like 80% of Ubisoft protagonists tbf.
While it’s easy to point and laugh at the failure of Apple TV, I want to look at the show as a whole as I still feel it should have garnered a lot more attention. The main reason I say this is because a lot of the show's inspiration came from interviews with employees at none other than Ubisoft, specifically its Toronto based studio. Mythic Quest was originally pitched by Ubisoft’s Film and Television division, which had previously developed the Assassin's Creed movie and a Rabbids animated series (both of which have worse reviews than Assassin’s Creed Unity before it was patched). Despite the studio’s track record, Rob accepted the pitch after talking with staff as he thought the setting could be compelling for a larger than life workplace dramedy.
This puts the show in a weird spot, it is produced by the largest games publisher in Europe and yet, Mythic Quest doesn't pull any punches in presenting workplace complaints that many Ubisoft employees have since spoken out about. Episode synopses revolve around the underappreciation of quality assurance testers (QA), the marginalisation of women, crunch culture, and the constant compromises to creativity in the name of monetisation and focus group feedback. The list of issues being discussed is impressive. However, much more notably is that some of the more subdued moments of exploitative behaviour within the show haven't been the focus of journalistic reports, exposés or tell-all Twitter threads. It feels like Mythic Quest is providing a unique insight into the corporate structure of Ubisoft and the struggles of its employees.
But, at the same time, this show is meant to make you laugh, and there are some hindrances in communicating these and other known issues through the medium of comedy. The cartoonish presentation is a deliberate decision to make these issues more palatable to a general audience, but it also presents an inherent disconnect within the show’s themes as its fast pace and larger than life characters are adverse to any real introspection. On top of this, the show fails to address the biggest issue that the company has been criticised for as of late, sexual assault allegations. While it is important to note that these stories surfaced after the release of the show, Ubisoft’s Toronto studio has reportedly been home to many vile acts for decades. It’s difficult to say which party advocated for the show’s surprisingly hard-hitting issues or what information was given to the crew, but the omission of such a glaring factor, while understandable, feels very off.
Breaking Down Season One
If we look at this show on an episodic basis, some of the presentation choices become a lot easier to understand. Mythic Quest uses its first few episodes to establish a promising set of characters played by a talented cast of nerdy individuals including a CollegeHumor writer (back when it wasn’t just the internet equivalent of SNL), Abed from Community, the voice actress of Horizon’s Aloy and McElhenney, himself. It also manages to portray the game studio setting with a surprising amount of harrowing detail. I really like how the game tester station is segregated to the bottom floor of the building to show that testers are literally below all other workers, and the simple story of implementing a single game mechanic, only to be greeted with significant backlash introduces viewers to struggles within creative jobs.
Troy and Abed are going murdering!
The show’s first major storyline revolves around the internal struggles of the studio’s Creative Lead, Ivan, and Lead Engineer, Poppy, as they decide what the best use for a new in-game item should be. During this squabble, Poppy deliberately leaks patch notes to a popular streamer in order to show that her idea is better, but the response is negative. This act of rebellion would most likely break countless non-disclosure agreements and get you fired from the company in real life. But in the fantasy realm of comedy land, the two leads decide to settle the argument behind closed doors by combining the benefits of each character’s strength, showing that creative and analytical individuals are needed to create a successful game and everyone goes home happy in time for credits to roll. However, at the end of the day, this is a sitcom, and as such, these lessons are destined not to last.
The storyline is continued in the third episode as the creative, non-threatening impacts of the item are exploited and a subset of players start using the item in an unintended manner to harass players and create pro-nazi symbolism. This news overshadows the item’s introduction causing press outlets to target the game while players complain en masse. In order to dig her way out of the situation, Poppy quickly implements a community feature that allows players to organise events with the intent that players would create a peace rally to deter the Nazis, however (as you might imagine), a much less wholesome rally is organised instead. While Poppy sees this mechanic as a failure and expects ramifications, Ivan realises that all the troublesome players have been lured into one area and have all given away their personal details, making the banning process easy.
During the events of this short story arc, two comedic side characters are introduced, the Community Manager and head of Human Resources at Ubisof- I mean Mythic Quest LLC. Both of these characters are rather one-note in comparison to the rest of the cast, Sue, the Community Manager resides in a basement-like office block and is characterised as cartoonishly unhinged. While Carol, the Human Resources officer, plays the overstated trope of ‘nagging woman’. In interviews, McElhenney has mentioned taking a particular interest regarding these roles through his interviews at Ubisoft. The problem is that by opting to make these recurring peoples’ only characteristics their job descriptions, these characters remain stagnant throughout the show. Worse, their unchanging, punchline-chasing nature ends up diminishing the real-world responsibilities of managerial staff as they are presented as little more than an inevitable constant in the workplace.
HAHAHA. We hate each other. But we love each others guts!
The second half of the series continues to focus on the dynamic between the creative and lateral thinking protagonists as their working relationships are constantly tested through increasingly demanding situations. Throughout this period, Poppy gets tempted to work at Mythic Quest’s rival company, which boasts a healthy working environment and clean cubicles. I was expecting some sort of evil twist to occur surrounding the ‘perfect’ nature of this company to keep the audience feeling good about the Mythic Quest employees/cast staying together. . But no, instead the showrunners manage to respectfully dissect the psychological challenges of passion and commitment surrounding the fallacy of “dream jobs” which manifests as depressingly realistic levels of guilt for Poppy. While the show could have presented this topic with the same level of comedy as the HR representative, these feelings are emphasised through episodes depicting a sad insecure boss, a sharp increase in workplace chaos and mismanagement and a standalone episode showing the foundations of the company through a grassroots story. It all paints a rather bleak but realistic picture where folks are just in too deep to leave now.
To elongate the story and provide breaks from the declining mental state of Poppy, side characters are brought into the spotlight as part of both primary and secondary plots within the remaining episodes. Up until this point, most of the supporting cast has been used as plot devices to further Ivan and Poppy’s stories, but, in the second half of season one, there is a far greater emphasis on game testers, writers and interns with storylines dedicated to the often inappropriate working relationships between these characters. These glimpses into the other job sectors show the effect that poor management has on individual workers as interactions are often awkward between team members and distractions from work are an inevitability - as office politics take precedence over development.
Did you just call Aloy boring?
However, most of the sympathetic characterisation of the show is still tied to the Lead Creative Officer, Poppy, whose inability to speak up while being in a position of power is often presented as victimisation while also being the cause of worker irritation. Games workers are often promoted into positions of power without the necessary training required to manage staff or speak on issues and it’s good to point out that women in all positions of power are being undercut by men in the games industry. The problem is that the show’s focus on high ranking workers creates a barrier that shields viewers from working-class viewpoints which often contain the most hard-hitting issues. For example, the issue of sexual relationships within an office environment is shown to be a complex affair of emotions without further discussion of the other, much darker forms of sexual interactions that can happen at a workplace. The show is happy to bring up the usual “will-they-won’t-they” quandaries of falling in love at the workplace but we are not seeing any managers abuse their power for sexual favours here, and this sidestepping only gets more abrasive in the second season.
Breaking News
The allegations at Ubisoft came to light a few weeks after the release of the first season and was eventually addressed by managerial staff a few months afterwards, but Apple and Ubisoft had already greenlit a second season before the first had finished airing (and thus likely right at the time this came to the forefront of public discourse). I can’t imagine how awkward it must have been for the production staff during this time, realising the effects that such issues have had on staff, and the parallels the show made between the challenges faced by employees and an unhealthy working environment, and it reflects in the show’s gradual change from video game-related mishaps to more generalised work-related issues.
Please Pause for a Global Pandemic
What do you mean “its a bottle episode”?
The second season started with a couple of specials showing how the pandemic has affected the Mythic Quest team, these episodes are presented using an online chatroom where each pivotal character is given an ample amount of screen time and forced to interact with one another. This low budget presentation style feels like a crutch for the specials as, despite being set amidst a global pandemic, the stakes for each episode are much lower. However, this lull in production is cleverly used to explain the low morale and tiredness of workers. There are some legitimate issues brought to light, including the over-and-underworking of staff caused by the lack of a shared office space and the effects it has inflicted on each job role. The ending of this arc is important to note as it includes a rare moment of scheduled and healthy teamwork, albeit on a small scale, which couldn’t have (*cough* *cough* likely) contradicted Ubisoft’s practices during this time.
I’m pretty sure this is just a photo from Bioware on a busy day of Dragon Age 4 development…
Season Two Shift
As expected, more traditional episodes dropped a few weeks after, and while they maintained the same characters, setting of the first season, the topics strayed away from game development specific issues. In one episode, the awkward Poppy accepts a workplace award, in another episode, the characters refuse to complete a personality test, while one of the first episodes of this season involves a fantasy-themed office party that gets out of hand, though not due to sexual advances. There are still themes of toxic masculinity shaping the workplace and mismanagement, but the issues have taken a backseat to character development and interactions.
How’s it going pal? Ya, done tightening up those graphics on level 4 yet?
Patch Notes
Having now watched both seasons, I don’t want to take away from Mythic Quest’s ability to highlight some really important issues surrounding large scale game production, showcasing how such a creative, cutting edge job can cause burnout and why management is both underskilled and overcompensated. While I don’t think it addresses every issue with the same level of nuance, it’s impressive that a comedy show is able to highlight such worrying parallels surrounding the issues of a specific company. It’s hard to say what sort of impact Mythic Quest would have had on the discourse surrounding both Ubisoft and other games industry allegations if more people had been watching it. But hey, my Mum now understands that games industry jobs are harder than they look, so that must count for something. Right?
