With Mythic Quest, he wanted to explore the tension between the game developer as the driving force behind a game, and the reality that, like making a TV show, building a game is an intensely collaborative process. He’s a ridiculous version of an actual human being.” “First, that they would own up to that, and second, because he has a very specific look, and the guys all look very, very similar. “I thought that was really funny,” he grins. Since the show first aired, McElhenney has been contacted on social media by a number of game developers who all assumed that they alone were the inspiration for the preening buffoon. At their offices in Montreal he met a game designer who, when McElhenney asked what he did, replied after an uncomfortably long pause: “I build worlds.”
The seed of the show was planted when Ubisoft, the gaming giant that develops Assassin’s Creed, approached McElhenney about making a TV show. McElhenney plays an egomaniacal, bushy-bearded game creator named Ian (pronounced Iron) Grimm who constantly butts heads with long-suffering lead engineer Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao).
Questions about the role traditional masculinity plays in the workplace are at the heart of Mythic Quest, which centres on the team behind a massively popular online fantasy game. ‘My character is a ridiculous version of an actual human being’ … Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.