I missed the debut a few weeks ago but Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (available on Apple TV here) is co-created and stars It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Rob McElhenney, who leads the development team behind the world's largest MMO, and to judge by the teaser, brings the same zany, genial a-hole energy to this series. (And the unexpected, mostly undesired appearance of virtual peen suggests McElhenney did his research.) Polygon was somewhat positive on the MMO side of things:
The storylines will resonate with gamers as pointed cultural commentary. A horrid teenage streamer lords it over Raven’s Quest like a distant titan, spouting empty drivel to his adoring fans and using a butthole-based metric to score his game reviews. The testing team (improbably, just two people) is constantly undervalued and overworked. Stressed coders are bought off with nonsense like free ice cream. Women on the team are often targeted by toxic male gamers.
The game itself looks like World of Warcraft, except with tacky gore, which adds to the sense of merriment. It’s often targeted by malefactors: Hackers bring destruction, while Nazis work to spread hate. The dev team’s financial whiz, Brad (Community’s Danny Pudi), insists on installing a virtual casino right in the middle of Mythic Quest’s medieval forests. It’s all an accurate skewering of gaming culture, which has, over the years, suffered greatly from poorly informed treatment on television.
I wish I could say Linden Lab had as much crazed office antics, but the wildest it ever got was when Lindens would challenge each other to taste an insanely numbing hot sauce called The Man, and, of course, when we'd run the open office blasting each other in the face with Nerf guns. (At least when I was there.)
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