The Movies

I'm continually convinced that the general public is retarded when it comes to expectations for games. I learned my lesson when Fable came out that early news and previews for a game are subject to change. I first heard about "The Movies" a year ago in Game Informer and it sounded like fun. I have Rollercoaster Tycoon and The Sims and I throroughly enjoyed burning my Sims to death and running rollercoasters off of uncompleted tracks. That being said, I enjoyed the micro management aspects. I am looking forward to making my own "movies" but I am well aware of what will be accessible for players to use. Expect a major backlash from John Q. Public when it is released.

It's not the public's fault that a lot of game sites have highlighted the 'movie making' portion of the game. The public doesn't assume anything, they get their news from the media. If that media and game company is saying that the game allows you to make your own movies or that every decision you make in a game will effect every single character for the entirety of your gameplay experience, well...that's what people are going to expect.

It's like blaming people who ate WOW chips right away for complaining about anal leakage.

I thought this came out last year and sucked, and I read game news sites all the time.

That's nothing - I used to play 'Theme Park' on my Sega back in the day.

I never tried Rollercoaster Tycoon on a console, but I thought Maxis did an amazing job of making The Sims work on the PS2 and XBox. But given that I have both, I'll definitely be playing this on the PC. I think both formats have their strengths, and strategy/simulation is definitely more at home on the PC.

I have to say that as far the expectations of the moviemaking, I can see both sides. Certainly, I've read interviews with the developers that seem to be hyping this aspect beyond what it could possibly really be capable of. On the other hand, there's little doubt that your average gamefan isn't exactly a mental giant, and builds upcoming games into epic poems in his fevered little brain.

Dudalb I am with Guttenberg here. Granted, my opinion on the game is based on what I have read about it in gaming publications. True they are selling the "run your own movie studio through different eras of hollywood", but I do think that they are also selling the "movie making" aspect quite a bit.

Most likely overselling it, like you already alluded to. Gamers (myself included) are expecting a relatively robust movie making engine because I consider that a big draw to the game. Thats what I find sets this game apart from other sims, and I think that is what we have been told to look forward to given the hype surrounding the game.

Also, I distinctly remember meier giving an interview where he stated the movies website would be accepting submissions of movies from gamers and there would be competitions and what not. The movie making aspect is a selling point, one of the major ones in my opinion. I fully expect it to be limited and disappoint many though.

Ha! Another great dudalb thread...

You know, I'm cautiously optimistic about this if only because of its possible potential. Having worked in that environment, I'm obviously curious about thestudio sim stuff. But the real meat and potatoes will be the "moviemaking" tools. If they're half as exciting as the trailers about the game, then it should be worth the price.

It's funny you should mention this because it's been on my radar ever since it was first announced. They had nothing on it at E3 2004. When I went this year all this and B&W2 had to display were two large cardboard cut outs. For there not to be demos, much less videos is very unusual for two such high profile titles that are going to be realesd later that year. There wasn't anything shown to the press either, which was weird. I had to download stuff at IGN just to see what

I suspect that it's the result of the fallout from the unprecedented hype and expectations of B&W 1 and Fable. Because of that I think Molyneaux is playing his cards very close to his vest -- maybe a bit too close.

Either, way I am definitely curious.

Oops, guilty as charged!

Glad to see this thing finally coming out. It's taken long enough.

Speaking of killing people in the Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon. I wonder if you can create studio "accidents", like purposely putting live rounds in a gun, or locking the doors to a car and blowing it up.

Doubt it

If you can make a helicopter 'accidentally' behead an actor, I'm so in.

Well, they say you need to take care of your stars that get into trouble. What better way to stop that then a stunt accident.

It's gold!

This thing comes out Thursday? I'm intrigued, but since I'm still knee deep in C-IV, I'll wait until I get some reports from folks.

According to Best Buy, this is out today, not Thursday. I'm going to swing by and pick it up after work.

Yeah, I saw at Best Buy this morning.

Wanted to get it, but am eager to hear some Chewer opinions before I throw money at something.

Due to not a single store in my city getting this yesterday, I'll be picking it up this afternoon, instead. Has anyone tried it out yet? Is it good?

It's gotten some pretty consistent 90+ ratings in most of the reviews I've seen.

Picked this up tonight on the way home from work -- which was an adventure in itself, since the Best Buy that the website said had the game in stock had nothing but pre-order boxes out, and I had to get two associates to spend fifteen minutes in the back looking for a copy -- and the goddamn thing is doing exactly the same thing Doom 3 did to me: gets all the way to "Publishing Product Information" and then just stops the install and nothing is there. I don't know what the hell Activision's problem is, but that's two games from them that have done the same thing. Doom 3 required a tedious manual install, and I dread the same thing for this game.

On the "why do so many people believe they can make movies" idea, I believe a representative (it may have been Peter himself) talked about how they made a short film based on Hitchcock's film Vertigo.

I mean while I doubt there will be masterpieces on it, maybe it will be stuff like flash movies that people watch.

http://movies.lionhead.com/movies.html

Movies are already being posted.

And after watching a few I say flashplayer fans need not worry (at least not yet anyway)

Very fun game so far, but it takes a lot more concentration than I'd thought it would. My first studio (now abandoned) went to pot after I forgot to pay attention to my main Director, and he showed up drunk for a shooting, causing the lead actress to storm off set, get depressed, and go on an eating binge.

Awesome.

I can't wait to get this.

One thing I really enjoy is the radio announcer, who changes with the era. In the 20's, he's this froo-froo theater guy, decrying Hollywood as a fad that will never compete with radio. In the 50's, it's a hardline, gruff anti-commie newscaster. It's all very amusing.

Oh hey, some of those movies are quite fun. At least, i've seen worse cut scenes. The canned animations definitely benefit a humorous tone rather than anything serious though. This doesn't seem a bad thing.

I don't think we'll be seeing any great art from what is essentially a little toy included with the game. The moviemaking part, to me, seems like a fun addition to an already very meaty simulation game. The Movies is slopping over with the feel of previous games like Theme Park and Theme Hospital, and that's a very good thing.

None of the fixes Activision suggested are working. They want me to uninstall SP2, which I'm getting a little sick of hearing -- the damn thing has been out for two years, I think it's about time developers made their damn programs work with it instead of making us jump through hoops.

And good luck searching for help online -- you try searching for help on a game called "The Movies" and getting anything specific.

Really fucking frustrated right now.

Yeah, they ended up putting out manual install instructions for Doom 3 where you basically just copied and pasted files from the CDs, but I tried following that and the specifics are too different to be useful in this case.

It would help if could uninstall SP2, but it's not listed in my Add/Remove Programs list and the spuninst.exe file for it is nowhere to be found.

No, I installed XP2 back when it came out, it's not integrated.

The problem is, Service Pack 2 isn't listed in my Add/Remove Programs list. There's plenty of other updates listed, but no SP2. And I'm not about to System Restore to a year ago.

I tried copying the folder right before it asked me to re-insert the first disc. All the data is there, but the game won't run. On Doom 3, they said to make a text file called "doomkey" and enter your product code into it. I could try the same thing with this, but I don't know what that file should be called ("movieskey" didn't work).

This is gonna sound like an odd request, but can somebody who has the game working send me a screenshot of what their installed game folder looks like? I'm gonna try to do this manually and I want to see what the finished install looks like.

It's a known issue with the InstallShield installer that has various solutions depending on the configuration of the computer. Since I'm the official Computer Nerd for all my friends I've had to do a fair bit of googling on the subject over the years. Here are some things you could try:

Follow the directions on this site.

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1. Go to Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services.
2. Double-click on the service 'Windows Installer'.
3. Change the Startup type from 'Manual' to 'Automatic'.
4. Reboot your machine.

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Check if you're logged in as an administrator. If you're not, log in as an administrator and run the installer.

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Disable the Windows Firewall and/or any other firewall software you have running, then run the installer.

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1) go to Control Panel
2) open Administrative Tools
3) open Local Security Policy
4) expand Local Policies
5) click on User Rights Assignment
6) in the right panel double click on Impersonate a client after authentication
7) click add user or group
8) in the text box enter "Administrators;SERVICE"
9) reboot and run the installer

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If you have Adaware Pro or a similar program installed:
Adaware Pro comes with Ad-Watch, which might block the creation of an essential registry key needed for the installation to complete.
Solution: terminate Ad-Watch via task manager (ctrl-alt-del, click Ad-Watch then click "End Process") and run the installer.

Loving this game. Lionhead are kind of like Pixar, to me. Even when they misfire, the result is still way ahead of their competitors - and The Movies is not a misfire.

My only complaint at this early stage is that I can see the Sims-style aspects of keeping your stars pampered and happy swiftly becoming an irritating distraction from the meat of the game - which is excellent.

The movie-making element is more complex than I thought it would be, and having jumped in without the tutorial, my first effort was Ed Wood-like in its incompetence - a sci-fi movie about Captain Balls in which the characters switched from spacemen to soldiers to cowboys from scene to scene.

I'm definitely going to make use of the StarMaker plug-in as well, because I think being able to create your own analogues of real world actors will beef up the hilarity factor considerably.

Plus, the world needs more 2 minute computerised Robert Z'Dar movies.

It is getting complex to try and keep all my stars happy as my studio has been growing, but it's remaining a challenge and not a frustration. I love that you get cool bonuses for winning awards at the awards ceremony. I've only managed to win one so far, for having the highest ranked, longest running star, but it automatically increases interest by the public in all your films, regardless of genre, for the next five years. Very cool.

There's so many little things to love about the game. Keeping up with news announcements gives you a good idea as to what kinds of movies the public wants. Utilizing the same actor over and over, despite giving them a lot of experience, will reduce the public's interest in your studio. And the fact that the paparazzi lurk around your studio is just great.

Totally going to pick this up based on your guys opinions.

I am getting so sick of hearing that theme song....

Keeks, I tried all your fixes (plus a few more I found this morning), and nothing works. The Event Viewer gives me an Event ID of 11708 and says "Installation operation failed."

I'm seriously at the end of my rope. I'm this close to just taking it back for store credit. I haven't heard back from Activision support since I told them their fixes didn't work. It just baffles me that this can still happen.

Am I missing something, or is there no way to demolish a building once it's placed? I've got the intermediate script building, and want to replace the basic one, but I can't seem to find out how you do it.

Surely you can delete obsolete items? I can't fathom a resource management sim where you don't have that basic ability.

Grab a builder, and then look around the building you want to destroy. There'll be two icons near it, one to destroy the building (and recoup some losses) and another if you just want to move it. Pick the one to destroy the building, and plop the builder down on there, and blammo.

Here's one more that worked for me once: wait until it gives you the error and don't press OK. Navigate to the place where you installed the game and copy it to some other location. Once you press OK it will probably delete everything it installed in the original location but you'll still have the copy. Just launch it from the .exe and you should be good to go if the missing registry entries didn't contain anything important.

I know the movie maker isn't extremly complex but can you make those 50's era giant animals/insect/people movies with this?

OK, i bought it. It better be good.

It actually is quite complex - once you factor in the post-production elements. What it isn't is flexible. You can only string together pre-determined shots - like running across the frame, or more specific ones like Discovering A Dead Body - but I'm finding it really hard to make them match up.

You can take away the number of people in a scene, but you can't add them. The game also decides where they stand in the set, which means characters can leap around from shot to shot. For example, shooting in the Wild West Jail set, sometimes it'll put the characters in the cell, sometimes outside. You can't change that, and it can make your films very disjointed.

The compressed time scale of the game also acts against you, and gives you no incentive to actually create decent movies yourself. I made a movie of 21 scenes (in which a scene can be something as simple as someone walking downstairs) and it took my studio 44 months to film it. It's a bit like how it could take The Sims two game hours to eat breakfast and walk out the front door, but here it really impacts on your ability to play competitively.

Not that it matters, as the criteria for a movie's success seems to hinge on using sets or costumes not seen before more than anything else. My first self-made film was an incomprehensible mess - a bunch of unrelated scenes with random costumes and locations - and it got great reviews and made a ton of money. My monkey opus, which I spent hours making as coherent and "real" as possible, got slated - because it relied on the same sets and actors throughout. You actually seem to be penalised the closer you get to what a real movie would be like.

The people lining up to work for you as actors, directors and crew are all motivated by your reputation, and by the end of my Kubrickian shoot - all to create a 2 minute clip in which a man fights a monkey while Peter Cushing beats up his girlfriend - nobody was lining up anymore. Which means no new stars. Which means fewer opportunities. Which puts you on a spiral of failure that's very hard to break out of.

Meanwhile, all these new sets and costumes keep coming available at a rapid pace, but you don't get to play with them properly because you're spending too much time trying to find ways to amuse a drunken director.

Oh, and there are no giant anythings. You can dress human actors as monsters, but that's it.

Not to sound too down on it, especially after my earlier gushings, but the instant appeal wears off quite quickly. Or so I'm finding. There's a lot of drudgery under the surface.

It's still good - even great in parts - but it's no Civ IV.