Hacker Cinema
Mythic Quest
2020 · TV series · 4 seasons
Created by Rob Mac, Charlie Day, Megan Ganz
Meet the team behind the biggest multiplayer video game of all time. But in a workplace focused on building worlds, molding heroes, and creating legends, the most hard-fought battles don’t occur in the game—they happen in the office.
23 positive2 negative3 mixed7 neutralfrom 35 commenters
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35 comments on Hacker News
Alternatively - and now that I'm thinking about it - I think Apple TV might adopt the A/24 model of purchasing individual movies and shows that they like, and marketing it like crazy.
In fact, that does seem to be Apple TV's model already. For example, Ted Lasso, Mythic Quest, Pachinko, Foundation, Silo, Severance, The Studio, and For All Mankind are all produced by entirely different production houses but licensing for them was acquired by Apple.
As it's only a weekend and at best you could maybe binge Slow Horses I would recomend the standalone episodes of Mythic Quest.
Season 1 has "A Dark Quiet Death" Season 2 has "Backstory"
This includes movies, but browsing their "originals" list, so far I (or my wife) have enjoyed (in no particular order):
Slow Horses Lessons in Chemistry Severance Ted Lasso Shrinking Mythic Quest Roar CODA The Problem with John Stewart And we are looking forward to checking out, in no particular order:
Palm Royale For All Mankind Criminal Record Killers of the Flower Moon Foundation Strange Planet The Morning Show Greyhound They're not all knockout hits. Overall we just feel safer trying something new there. If we don't like it, it's usually just because it's not for us, and less because it feels like an algorithmic, soulless cash grab.
The Morning Show, Severance, Silo, Tehran, Presumed Innocent, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, Disclaimer, Shrinking, Loot, Severance, Where's Wanda?, Foundation, Cowboy Cartel (short documentary), Midnight Family, The Last Thing He Told Me, Invasion, Mythic Quest, Bad Monkey, Dickinson...
There's so many good shows on Apple TV.
I don’t see any end to gaming. It meets deep human needs to master things, achieve things along the way and participate in a way that you don’t do with spectator sports, movies, or tv. I’m a jaded corporate type and it seems like playtime to me! Plus, I’ve watched mythic quest!
Lots of feelings seeing Sierra come up again. Lots of good memories playing Sierra games as a kid.
The story feels like it bears some similarity to the Dark Quiet Death episode from Mythic Quest. The video game industry, the husband-and-wife team, the rollercoaster of success and failure. Maybe just a coincidence. If you haven't seen it, it's a very good (and very sad) stand-alone episode. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10084334/
There are a couple I think are fine. Mythic quest and Severance, but that what was it? Foundation series, omg, I couldn’t make it a whole episode.
I don’t know why everyone sleeps on Mythic Quest. That show is hilarious. I can’t wait for season 4.
Are you aware that there is an entire three season Apple TV series that makes fun of people like you, a biting realistic parody of the game industry like HBO's Silicon Valley is of the computer industry?
Anyone who's seen Mythic Quest and knows the personality types they're parodying can clearly see you for the kind of person you truly are (I'd bet you're a Pootie Shoe).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythic_Quest
Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet Season 1 Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50Yz1apB7iw
Mythic Quest: The Best Sitcom No One Talks About:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PYkRYS05hw
Pootie Shoe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q_Zd6SDIPM&t=263s
https://mythic-quest.fandom.com/wiki/Pootie_Shoe
As someone who's into more light-hearted fare...
The After Party is fun. It's a murder-mystery, with each episode retelling the same night of the murder in the style of a different film genre. Rashomon-y, but more about playing with genre than with strictly what was seen.
Mythic Quest is pretty well targeted for the HN crowd, insofar as it's a comedy set in a video game studio, and does a lot about software-dev culture.
The book was heavily pushed on tiktok because it hit the platforms target demo perfectly with the angsty young characters set in a video game backdrop that the average tiktok age group could understand.
Personally I was hoping it would have been more like the backstory episode of the Mythic Quest TV show and was disappointed. It was an average story at best with characters that never really matured, but that doesn't matter because I'm not the target audience. The target will connect with the characters and come away thinking it was a fantastic story and will gobble up any movie/tv show that comes out of it. Good job, author and marketing.
You can't please everybody.
Tried with Mythic Quest for two seasons and just couldn't stick with it.
Ted Lasso OTOH I'll watch as soon as a new episode pops up.
I enjoyed these TV shows: - Ted Lasso - Severance - Bad Sisters - Servant - Trying - Mythic Quest - The Morning Show (season 1)
And these movies: - Cha Cha Real Smooth - Swan Song - Coda - The Banker - The Tragedy of MacBeth - The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Looking forward to the Sidney movie as well.
Even the name is boring. It sounds like a fictional generic game in a show or a movie. (Sort of like "Mythic Quest.")
This reminds me of the Mythic Quest Season 2 episode 6 called "Backstory!"
I guess there was the Mythic Quest Quarantine episode.
Real Genius (1985) is a pretty good one. Apollo 13 has some hardware hack stuff. Wargames (1983) a little bit. Hackers (1995) did a good job of capturing what it felt like online during the tail end of the HPA BBS thing. Halt and Catch Fire is a good TV show. Others have mentioned Silicon Valley, Office Space and Mr Robot. The best related thing I’ve seen lately is Apple TV’s Mythic Quest, lolling right now thinking about it. Watch all of these.
Grandma’s Boy and Office Space for movies.
Various aspects of The IT Crowd, Silicon Valley and Mythic Quest for TV shows.
Following Severance (which will be out in February) Apple TV+ will also release an eight episode series called "WeCrashed" based upon the WeWork saga in March [1].
And if you haven't seen it, there is also Mythic Quest (seasons 1 and 2) that is an Apple TV+ comedy series based in the offices of a game studio.
Also don't forget The Morning Show which is an Apple TV+ drama based in the offices of a fictional breakfast TV show.
So no matter what type of dysfunctional workplace you may enjoy, Apple will have you covered.
[1] https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2022/01/academy-award-winners-jared-leto-and-anne-hathaway-star-in-new-apple-original-limited-series-wecrashed-premiering-globally-march-18-2022/
LOL, this reminds of an episode of Mythic Quest where the lead engineer (Poppy) imagines "real-time, persistent, globally-reflected environment changes" for the MMO they built, gets told that it's unfeasible by the entire dev team, mows ahead anyway and ends up with a disastrous demo at the end when the system basically collapses on itself.
Funny how reel-life and real-life collide into each other! :D
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As an aside, after Ted Lasso (which gets all the well-deserved hype), Mythic Quest is a great trope-filled show esp. for anyone who's worked in tech in general (and game dev specifically).
Apollo 13 (1995) - there are various scenes showing the engineers working through various technical problems (much like gravity and the martian)
Antitrust (2001) - The technical portion is goofy, but discusses the open source software movement, VCs, working for a major tech company (an evil bill gates character played by tim robbins)
Sneakers (1992) - Personally, one of my favorite movies of all-time. Code breaking, old school hacking (think wargames). I think the best description i've heard of it is an 1970s caper movie. You will never see a better cast in a movie. Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Ben Kingsley, James Earl Jones, Dan Ackroyd, River Phoenix, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell all play major roles
Mythic Quest (2020) - Apple tv show about creating video games and running a tech company
> What recent (non-animated) funny movie or show have you seen that is not "feel good" or filled with sexual jokes?
I don't really watch comedy films but I watch a reasonable amount of comedy shows:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Atlanta, Avenue 5, Fleabag, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Resident Alien, Barry, Home (UK), Mythic Quest, AP Bio, Tacoma FD, Ted Lasso, Russian Doll, Veep, You're the Worst, Better Things·
I'm not sure what your qualifier for "recent" is so feel free to ignore some of those.
Sure a lot of these aren't farces like Airplane or Scary Movie but it's not all feel good or dick jokes. There is plenty of comedy out there for all types of tastes.
I didn't watch Ted Lasso for a while because I'm not particularly interested in soccer. But a friend highly recommended it to me and now my wife and I have watched the whole season 3 times and can barely wait for the next one to drop.
I've watched Mythic Quest several times too. Love that show a lot. For All Mankind is also great. I've been really happy with my Apple subscription and can't wait to see what else they do.
There's an Apple TV+ original show called Mythic Quest[1] about a video game company and they did a really great episode about game development and mental health. The show is mostly a comedy and written by some of the people from Always Sunny.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythic_Quest
"Mythic Quest"[0] is also a great show that I'm sure many people on HN would enjoy on an extra level, since it deals with gaming and making games and they don't hesitate to make fun of their unsaid partnership with Ubisoft Montreal.
For reference, it's got a mix of production and cast from Community and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and their pandemic episode is currently the highest rated for the show because they don't shy away from some of the more real moments amidst the joyous insanity of the show.
I'm guessing Apple TV+ is in the current state that Netflix & Amazon Prime were in a few years back: make good content, dare to do things, and make a name for yourself. Good for us, I'd say.
[0] https://www.justwatch.com/ca/tv-show/mythic-quest-ravens-banquet
Obviously they don't have the volume but their average quality is probably as good as any streaming service. Over 16 non-film/doc/kids series the mean tomatometer/metascores is a pretty solid 74/64 and there's 5 with 90+/70+:
Ted Lasso, Tehran, Mythic Quest, Little America, and Central Park.
I enjoyed the first 4 of those and haven't seen the last.
For the first four episodes of Mythic Quest it seems like a standard comedy show from a template, done reasonably well with good acting, but not great.
Episode 5: “A Dark Quiet Death” takes a left turn so bizarre that for 5 minutes I thought my AppleTV had switched to an entirely different show. When I finally realized it was the same show in a different time, place and with different characters I was like OK, that’s it, I gave it enough of a chance, time to stop watching.
But just before I tapped the menu button, Doc and Bean drew me in enough to watch longer, and longer, until I reached the end.
By the end I decided A Dark Quiet Death was one of the best tv episodes I’d ever seen. I wasn’t crying, you were crying! my eyes were just very, very dry and tired, and sad.
And even though the story returns to present day in the very next episode, every episode after A Dark Quiet Death was imbued with a great deal more meaning. And an understanding that making games isn’t just a fun way to make a living. Sometimes it’s an expression of things you really care about, and an attempt to communicate those feelings to others.
I absolutely loved Mythic Quest, but if it didn’t grab you after the first episode, then it’s just not your cup of tea.
Does mythic quest get a lot better after episode 1? We watched it right after Ted Lasso and it was so ... mean. It _seems_ like something I should like, though.
This reminds me of the episode of Mythic Quest where they decided they wanted to ban Nazis--but then they started asking, "Who else should we ban?" The committee ended up with a horrifyingly-unwieldy list of hate/predatory groups. They felt it was just too many, so they put them all into a bracket and voted--Nazis still won.
By the time the meeting was over, the engineers had figured out a way to flag all the Nazis and just moved them all to their own instance. Problem solved.
Have you watched Mythic Quest? There's a particular episode touching this, that doesn't really require the rest of the series and is very good.
Check it out if you can - it' "Dark Quiet Death" from Season one
See, Truth Be Told, and Amazing Stories seem to be widely panned, and I haven't liked them either though I have yet to finish them. For All Mankind would probably resonate most with the HN community. I liked The Morning Show much more than I expected to, and it was a nuanced depiction of workplace power dynamics along with the behind the scenes of those types of shows. Little America is outstanding, the immigrant stories are authentic and multi-layered without being political. Servant is quite good, it's unsettling throughout and you have to pay close attention. Mythic Quest I found to be funny and entertaining, and people who work in game development say it points to underlying truths. People who I know personally are split on it, maybe if you like the Always Sunny in Philadelphia style then you'll like it more. Episode 5 of Mythic Quest comes out of left field and is in my opinion the single best episode on Apple TV+.
I never watched Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm however I grabbed season 1 of Curb two weeks ago as I am in lockdown and wanted something different/new (to me) to watch and fell in love with it.
I am now on season 8(!) and there hasn't been a single episode I have not thoroughly enjoyed.
It is a superb show with some excellently executed jokes. Probably some of the best I have seen on TV. Some of the jokes are so superbly setup as well that you don't realise until the punchline drops that the build up has been several episodes.
I also watched Mythic Quest earlier in the year which was a lot of fun. We mostly watched it because my wife is a video game producer so we had a good time laughing at how real some of the craziness can be in the video game production world.
Avenue 5 took a while to find its pace but by the end of the season it was quite fun. Different but well done. I am looking forward to season 2.
I plan to sit down and watch Always Sunny, Veep and Seinfeld now :)
It's Always Sunny absolutely takes inspiration from Seinfeld.
They're even self aware about it in the episode "The Gang Does a Clip Show" where they mistake a bit from Seinfeld as one of their own memories - https://youtu.be/fCwI3KDGtRk
How did you like Mythic Quest? I'm really glad to see Rob and Charlie involved but it's definitely a bit more tame. I really like Danny Pudi playing a Dennis-esque character and the actress who plays Poppy is hilarious.
Also used in the excellent TV series Mythic Quest :)