'It's just such a depressing thing': Mythic Quest's creative team on the challenge of making a comedy amidst widespread gaming industry layoffs
«Mythic Quest lost a lot of good people… when we fired them,» says David Bricklesbee (played by David Hornsby) in the first episode of Mythic Quest Season 4.
The workplace comedy about a dysfunctional game development studio doesn't waste any time referencing the biggest game industry trend of the past two years: mass layoffs. Bricklesbee, the studio's executive producer, addresses the challenges the fictional studio has faced since last season, like Covid. Specifically, the end of Covid, which brought the end of sky-high profits and thus mass layoffs.
While Season 4 doesn't focus heavily on the layoff situation (which continued this week, somewhat ironically, with Ubisoft, who produces Mythic Quest, shuttering another studio and laying off nearly 200 employees), the topic does pop up from time to time throughout the season.
«This is not 2020. The Covid bubble has burst,» David says in another episode when asked to hire more staff members.
«Dude, the videogame industry made 56 billion dollars last year,» says Rachel Meyee (played by Ashly Burch).
«Yeah, down from 60 billion. We're down four billion dollars. Do we know if another global pandemic is coming?» David says. «I mean, we hope. I mean, not for the death and all that stuff, that's terrible. But we made so much money.»
During a Mythic Quest press junket conducted over Zoom, I spoke to several of the show's creators and writers: Rob Mc Elhenney, co-creator, executive producer, and actor who plays Mythic Quest's founder Ian Grimm (and co-creator of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia); Megan Ganz, co-creator, executive producer, and writer; and Ashly Burch, writer, co-producer, and actor. I asked them about the challenge of threading the needle when it comes to making jokes about such a serious topic.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
«This is exactly the kind of thing we talk about on [It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia] every year,» Rob McElheney
Read more on pcgamer.com
