ahlam1399
02-14-2020, 09:54 PM
Outside of documentaries, video games get a pretty poor showing on television. Too often, games appear as a poorly researched subplot, like ‘Epic Fail’, the episode of House where a tiny team of developers is making a full-body VR game called SavageScape. Airing in 2009, it looked more like Star Trek’s holodeck than anything you could play at the time. All of the gameplay is clearly a CGI cutscene. Besides the futuristic games, developers would talk to each other like teenagers, and the technical talk is abstract – commenting on the blood looking funny, a developer says, “ still working on it, the code’s a little janky.”
<span/>At its worst, Apple TV’s sitcom [I]Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet falls exactly into that trap. Programmers talk in irrelevant techno babble and the way they’re making a game bears little resemblance to the reality of development. In the first episode, the lead developers are having a meeting about releasing Raven’s Banquet, Mythic Quest‘s first expansion. The team has been working on it for two years and, now, just days before release, everything is finished, and no one looks exhausted or particularly stressed about the imminent launch. The team’s main problem is trying to stop their boss, Ian Grimm, played by Rob McElhenney, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s creator, from “noodling” with the game and making more changes. Specifically, he wants to change the shovel, an item added by chief programmer Poppy.
The first episode has some hints of what’s to come. The team debates the problems the shovel could create, like lowering the game’s TTP – Time To Penis. By giving players a tool that lets them carve into the game’s terrain, surely they’re just going to create dicks? It’s a throwaway joke but it’s also a very real problem developers deal with, particularly makers of children’s games like Minecraft and the LEGO games.
Brad, the monetisation lead, played by Danny Pudi, who was Abed in Community, comes up with a plan to sell the shovel using a sexy wood nymph as a way to make it more appealing. Brad is exactly the money-loving suit you’d picture when imagining who dreams up loot box systems for games. Their biggest hurdle is how to make the item more appealing to a 14-year-old streamer called Pootie Shoe, who, with 10 million followers, determines whether their game will be a success. The answer, of course, is to make the shovel a weapon.
https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Its-Always-Sunny-Creators-Gaming-Show-Is-Great-After-The.jpg&quality=70&width=648.jpegCredit: Apple TVThe problem with that first episode is that it could be any workplace comedy; it just happens to have some gaming-themed jokes and there are lots of game posters around the office. Thankfully, as the series continues it reveals itself to be a much smarter comedy than these first impressions imply.
Later episodes dive into particular gaming topics. There’s an episode devoted to loot boxes and monetisation, and the way player boycotts and demands can impact a game’s development. Another has the team dealing with clan of Nazi players, and whether to ban or embrace them as an active part of their playerbase. Although played for laughs, the different responses to the Nazis in the game are all believable, and the episode culminates in an event that could have been ripped straight from the gaming press, right down to the animated salutes. There’s even an episode that addresses how hostile the game industry is to women, which sees the team’s male executive producer David, played by David Hornsby, who you might recognise as the scarred, one-eyed, ex-priest Cricket from It’s Always Sunny, leading a group of young girl coders around the office in an increasingly desperate search for any female staff.
https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1581705847_470_Its-Always-Sunny-Creators-Gaming-Show-Is-Great-After-The.jpg&quality=70&width=648.jpegCredit: Apple TVMythic Quest is created by McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz, all of whom had a hand in making It’s Always Sunny. And, while it doesn’t go to the same dark places of that series, it captures something of that willingness to let its characters be awful thanks to their worst motivations. Brad is willing to let almost any behaviour slide if it will bring profit, Ian will trample anyone in the way of his creative vision, and the streamer, Pootie Shoe, well he’s just awful
The standout of the series, though, is episode five. Leaving all the main characters behind, the episode starts in 1993 as a pair of developers meet and start work on their passion project. One is the designer, the other producer, and we follow them over the years as their game grows into a series, and how the more successful it becomes the greater pressure is put on them to make their creative vision more commercial. It’s an excellent episode that captures the internal struggles of marrying a personal project with the need to make it appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
If you can get past that first episode, Mythic Quest is a treat that overcomes the long history of television shows that don’t understand gaming. While the game industry the series deals with is simplified and doesn’t represent the true scale of AAA development, it does a good job of embracing the particular challenges of making games and working with an online audience.
Source link (https://www.ladbible.com/technology/gaming-its-always-sunny-creators-new-show-gets-gaming-20200211)</p>
أكثر... (https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/2020/02/14/its-always-sunny-creators-gaming-show-is-great-after-the-first-episode/)
<span/>At its worst, Apple TV’s sitcom [I]Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet falls exactly into that trap. Programmers talk in irrelevant techno babble and the way they’re making a game bears little resemblance to the reality of development. In the first episode, the lead developers are having a meeting about releasing Raven’s Banquet, Mythic Quest‘s first expansion. The team has been working on it for two years and, now, just days before release, everything is finished, and no one looks exhausted or particularly stressed about the imminent launch. The team’s main problem is trying to stop their boss, Ian Grimm, played by Rob McElhenney, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s creator, from “noodling” with the game and making more changes. Specifically, he wants to change the shovel, an item added by chief programmer Poppy.
The first episode has some hints of what’s to come. The team debates the problems the shovel could create, like lowering the game’s TTP – Time To Penis. By giving players a tool that lets them carve into the game’s terrain, surely they’re just going to create dicks? It’s a throwaway joke but it’s also a very real problem developers deal with, particularly makers of children’s games like Minecraft and the LEGO games.
Brad, the monetisation lead, played by Danny Pudi, who was Abed in Community, comes up with a plan to sell the shovel using a sexy wood nymph as a way to make it more appealing. Brad is exactly the money-loving suit you’d picture when imagining who dreams up loot box systems for games. Their biggest hurdle is how to make the item more appealing to a 14-year-old streamer called Pootie Shoe, who, with 10 million followers, determines whether their game will be a success. The answer, of course, is to make the shovel a weapon.
https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Its-Always-Sunny-Creators-Gaming-Show-Is-Great-After-The.jpg&quality=70&width=648.jpegCredit: Apple TVThe problem with that first episode is that it could be any workplace comedy; it just happens to have some gaming-themed jokes and there are lots of game posters around the office. Thankfully, as the series continues it reveals itself to be a much smarter comedy than these first impressions imply.
Later episodes dive into particular gaming topics. There’s an episode devoted to loot boxes and monetisation, and the way player boycotts and demands can impact a game’s development. Another has the team dealing with clan of Nazi players, and whether to ban or embrace them as an active part of their playerbase. Although played for laughs, the different responses to the Nazis in the game are all believable, and the episode culminates in an event that could have been ripped straight from the gaming press, right down to the animated salutes. There’s even an episode that addresses how hostile the game industry is to women, which sees the team’s male executive producer David, played by David Hornsby, who you might recognise as the scarred, one-eyed, ex-priest Cricket from It’s Always Sunny, leading a group of young girl coders around the office in an increasingly desperate search for any female staff.
https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1581705847_470_Its-Always-Sunny-Creators-Gaming-Show-Is-Great-After-The.jpg&quality=70&width=648.jpegCredit: Apple TVMythic Quest is created by McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz, all of whom had a hand in making It’s Always Sunny. And, while it doesn’t go to the same dark places of that series, it captures something of that willingness to let its characters be awful thanks to their worst motivations. Brad is willing to let almost any behaviour slide if it will bring profit, Ian will trample anyone in the way of his creative vision, and the streamer, Pootie Shoe, well he’s just awful
The standout of the series, though, is episode five. Leaving all the main characters behind, the episode starts in 1993 as a pair of developers meet and start work on their passion project. One is the designer, the other producer, and we follow them over the years as their game grows into a series, and how the more successful it becomes the greater pressure is put on them to make their creative vision more commercial. It’s an excellent episode that captures the internal struggles of marrying a personal project with the need to make it appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
If you can get past that first episode, Mythic Quest is a treat that overcomes the long history of television shows that don’t understand gaming. While the game industry the series deals with is simplified and doesn’t represent the true scale of AAA development, it does a good job of embracing the particular challenges of making games and working with an online audience.
Source link (https://www.ladbible.com/technology/gaming-its-always-sunny-creators-new-show-gets-gaming-20200211)</p>
أكثر... (https://hameed.nwar.uk/vb/w101/2020/02/14/its-always-sunny-creators-gaming-show-is-great-after-the-first-episode/)