Video game industry the butt of jokes in Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet
- Streaming show’s creators examine the gaming culture’s inferiority complex and its desperate need to be taken seriously
- Star Rob McElhenney wants the series to ‘skewer the misogyny’ of gaming
The opening moments of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, now streaming on Apple TV+, put the spotlight on the video game industry’s inferiority complex.
A trailer for the show’s fictional game launches the series, boasting about the medium’s importance as much as it does the product it aims to sell. Global gaming revenue, the hyperbolic game teaser argues, towers over other forms of pop art.
Then the clip zeroes in on Ian Grimm, the game developer portrayed by show producer and actor Rob McElhenney. Here, the voice-over echoes a long-standing insecurity of the gaming industry, which has not always been taken as seriously as its cinematic peers.
Mythic Quest draws its humour from the tension between the grand artistic ambitions and pomposity of video game studios on one hand – Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft, a producer on the show, describes itself as “a creator of worlds” – and the adolescent streak present in both games and their communities on the other.
The series, from the minds behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, isn’t shy about mining comedy from the problems that plague the video game industry. For one, the business is largely comprised of men. For another, the long hours, among other issues, have fuelled talks of unionisation. Both topics figure heavily in the second half of Mythic Quest’s first season.