I just asked a question about poorly represented mythologies, and it seems that Smite is the only video game that I can think of that includes poorly represented myths. All others are focused on overused myths.
Elden Ring - gods, demigods, uber-gods, and incest gods, etc
The Elder Scrolls series has 20-something gods each with their own personality.
Cult of Sheogorath here!
A lot of big fantasy games have a blending of a myriad of mythology. Like everything is inspired by something that came from somewhere. D&D, and by extension many videos games using the rules and settings, is among those included. They have things ranging from typical Anglo-Saxon myths to Japanese kappa, Egyptian gods, and more.
Which mythologies would you like to see represented?
I think this would apply to all media, and probably just comes down to some traditions being more familiar and having more cultural impact in general.
Basically all other than Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian
Basically all other than
Why do people do this?
The opposite of what someone asks isn’t the same answer.
If you could actually give an example, someone might tell you a game about that
I’ll list a few other pantheons on his behalf if it makes you feel better:
Voodoo, Yoruba, Celtic, Japanese, Polynesian, Aztec.
Celtic might be the next most common one? It’s a link to Reddit, but here are some suggestions: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamingsuggestions/comments/d0z2nl/games_that_explore_irish_andor_celtic_folklore/
I had a look at the Smite roster, and yeah it’s cool to see some Celtic and Polynesian representation there.
I would personally love to see indigenous Australian mythology represented much at all in media. It would be challenging because you’re dealing with hundreds of individual nations, most of which had their culture taken from them before it could be well documented, but there are a few recurring themes to draw from.
The closest thing to a god entity would be the rainbow serpent, which you could argue is related to common global themes of flying serpents. Similarly, the yowie has almost spiritual status in some places, but is similar to yetis and sasquatch. I recently learned about the Seven Sisters myth being another one.
World building hard.
To be fair tho, your evidence is anecdotal.
Popularity × audience + accessibility to devs.
Popularity is a vague term for how well represented a pantheon already is in popular media; movies, books, tv, comics, gaming mostly, with maybe some music being a factor.
That’s amplified by the intended audience. If your audience is focused on one place in the world, chances are better that their pantheon, whatever it may be, will get picked. Otherwise, it’s likely to be a Western pop culture audience.
And it’s likely that developers are going to go with what they know best. It’s like how jrpgs pull more from Japanese mythology when they use mythology, and korean devs often pull from their history and legends first. It isn’t as heavily weighted as the intended audience, but it’s in there.
So, there’s typically going to be a bias towards mythologies that are easier to research, when the devs aren’t familiar with something, and it ends up with a lot of the published and easy to find info on pantheons in general is in English, and is heavily biased towards European and Mediterranean mythologies.
There’s also the factor that a lot of people default to what’s in Bullfinch’s mythology. So, Greek/Roman, Norse, and that’s about it lol. Even Celtic mythology gets shafted in that regard, the slavic gods get totally ignored, and you might as well just pretend that any deity that wasn’t also in Clash of the Titans doesn’t exist.
Egyptian mythology tends to be horribly misrepresented even compared to Greek. And pretty much any pop culture use of mythology ignores the fact that pantheons weren’t some kind of static group that never changed, and weren’t all worshipped the same everywhere. Hell, it wasn’t even always a pantheon that was worshipped at all, it could be single deities, where the others just got a nod occasionally.
I ran into some of the trouble when looking into mythology when doing world building. It’s fairly easy to find translation into English if you stick to those cultures. You can often find translation of original texts and later recordings of oral writ, not just stuff like Bullfinch’s.
Finding anything even remotely unfiltered for anything from the Asian regions is harder. You can usually find good translations of some of the more well known texts, but past that you’re relying on what some other person’s interpretation of what they read is, and that’s not the same as a translation.
So, it isn’t just a gaming industry thing. It’s everywhere.
You could study one mythology and create an accurate game, or research hundreds of them, and pull one or two characters from each.
It’s just more work.
