The Movies - Page 2

That line right there sealed my decision. I was debating getting this or Civ IV. From what you said it doesn't sound like I would like The Movies very much. Civilization IV it is then. The Movies can wait until the price drop. Thanks

I don't care for strategy games at all, but the subject matter is forcing me to buy this. Hands up everyone who played the Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair game.

I wouldn't expect it to be anything like Civ IV.

Not in terms of specific details - though they are both strategy games that feature a lot of research and construction as the core gameplay elements - but in terms of scope and freedom of play. There's only one way to play The Movies - it's just a question of whether you can juggle the elements well enough to succeed.

Ironically, given the subject matter, there's not much room for creativity in the way you play - whether you want to be Roger Corman or Steven Spielberg, you just have to keep churning out movies (choosing from one of five genres based on the market) and buying the latest improvements for your studio.

It's fun. It's cute. But a lot of it is just resource grinding.

Also, you never get to see the rival studios or see what movies they're making, so if you are struggling to beat them in the awards ceremonies, you've got no idea what they're doing right or what you're doing wrong. There's a chart you can check to see how you're ranked against the others, but there's no in-game trade press to actually make you feel you're not just working in a vacuum.

And given what a gossipy, incestuous business Hollywood is, that's a rather bizarre omission.

Godammit Whitehead, i spent money on this. I'm blaming you.

Okay, I'm loving this game so far; anytime I'm spending time at work thinking about what I'm going to try in the game when I get home, it's a thumbs-up game. I do have one complaint, but maybe I'm missing something someone else noticed:

When it's time to create a new screenplay, is there no way to automatically find your writers? I keep having to look around the studio and find out where they've wandered off to. It's annoying.

Just cycle through the lists on the left side of the screen. You can automatically find and drag any of your stars, builders, writers, janitors, extras, crew members, scientists, whoever. Just hold down on their card, and you'll pick them up automatically.

Ah. I didn't know that list cycled. I thought it was just for directors and actors. Thanks.

Amen on the manual. That's a complaint I've been having a lot lately, actually. I suspect that the publishers are trying to push the strategy guides, so they give us the bare minimum of necessary facts in the manual.

Some of the "movies" on that website don't look half bad. But what's up with everyone having epilepsy? Even when the characters are just standing there talking to each other they sway back and forth.

I wonder if there will be add-on discs like the Sims with more characters and backgrounds.

You can do that. Just build both the custom script office and the basic script office.

One realistic aspect i've found - i gave up long ago watching any of the flms my studio makes. I mean, what's the point?

Yeah, I found that. Unless it's one I put together myself.

My studio made one horror movie which was just a guy falling over in a cellar. I mean, this was supposed to be in the '30s, but even so - I think narratives were a tad more involved than that.

I guess my main issue would be that there's no correlation between the subjective "quality" of the movies you make and their relative success. This means that the Movie Maker option might as well be a distinct and seperate entity, as it has little bearing on the outcome of the game and - as I discovered - putting too much time and effort into making a "good" movie can actually be detrimental to your studio. It's better to just throw out any old crap, as long as it looks good and is in tune with the market.

Maybe that's supposed to be some meta-comment on Hollywood, but I doubt it.

I'm just pissed that you can't choose what sort of studio you want to be. Naturally, I wanted to run a little Corman-esque exploitation outfit, specialising in horror and sci-fi. But the game treats that as a failure, and penalises you for not being all things to all people. Which is silly, because Hollywood is full of studios that succeeded precisely because they targetted a specific audience.

I guess the creation of works of art that happen to be mass-market entertainment is subject to far too many random factors, unknown variables and good old fashioned human tastes to be crammed into a computer programme with any great degree of realism. You can't simulate the social and cultural dynamic that goes into the making of a cult hit, or that makes a connection between screen and audience. Much like CGI stuntmen, you can approximate reality, but anything less than complete success is painfully apparent, because we're so used to the actual thing.

I think the problem with a game like this (and with previous Lionhead games like Fable) is that they offer more than ever before, they take you 90% of the way to a truly freeform and spontaneous gameworld - but that just makes the 10% that remains out of reach all the more noticeable.

If you keep a crap level script writing house in operation then you can crank out cheapies really quickly and they still make hundreds of thousands in profit.

The problem with the prestige pictures is that they need lots of stars and crew and evreyone gets stressed and they ages to finish.

Crank out the one star films and you can be sort of like Corman. I'm rolling in cash at the moment.

So is it pretty much a given that your studio is going to suck early on? No matter how closely I try to match up the material with my cast and director, my movies inevitably rank less than one star, while other studios consistantly come in at one and a half.

Yes, but what's the problem with that? Look, people are complaining about how so-and-so doesn't really reflect this-or-that. This is supposed to be a strategy game, not a picture-perfect recreation of what it's like to operate a movie studio. Rollercoaster Tycoon didn't accurately reflect the realities of running a theme park either, because that's not the point. Reality has to take a backseat to creating a challenging, balanced game experience. If you want reality, go start a production company.

Damn, that's a good idea. I tore my basic script house down when I got the intermediate one. I may have to put it back up.

Oh I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to figure out if I'm inept or not.

Okay, well somebody above was complaining.

And yes, I'm having the same experience. You don't start getting 2-star movies until your director and cast have a lot of experience in the genre. I'm having more success by having my stars really specialize in particular genres.

It just makes it hard to compete, but I guess that's what being a new studio would be like.

I had a crash when I moved my first custom script into the Begin Casting slot, anyone else experience this?

That's true. And remember when manuals were in color, and they put some work into the design? Quake II comes to mind. We don't see that anymore. I wonder how long it'll be before the manual goes away completely, and we're expected to rely entirely on the in-game reference. Of course, those are getting less helpful all the time as well.

No, but I had a crash last night where I lost sound, and then tried to quit the game. Froze up everything, and I had to hard reboot.

So do any of you have any bright ideas as to how to get more people working for you - more extras and more entourage especially?

You just have to keep cranking out films and stay in the public eye. I did notice more people coming in when my rank went from 5 to 4. And keep an eye out for photographers -- grab them and drop them near your stars, it boosts their egos and gets you some good publicity.

dualb, I finally just said the hell with it and ran my recovery discs on my PC. Lost all my CDs I had burned onto the hard drive (I still have the hard copies, but I had boxed them up to save space), but that damn SP2 is finally gone and the game installed fine. Plus getting rid of four years worth of accumulated junk sure didn't hurt the operating speed.

Tagline for this game: "Run the studio! Make the movies!"

Why call it The Movies if it's not supposed to be a recreation of operating a movie studio? The point of difference between making movies and making, say, engine parts for hovercraft is that movies are creative. But the game fudges that part of the equation and awards progress based on hitting pre-defined criteria - new sets, suitable stars, timely release.

I've yet to have a movie that wasn't a success - indeed, once you release them the game seems to lose interest in the movies themselves, which is kinda weird. There's no room for surprise successes or flops. The game doesn't allow for that unexpected golden script out of nowhere. Everything has to grow in a linear fashion. First you do 1 star scripts. Then you get 2 star. Then 3. And so on.

It obviously can't be note perfect as to what a real studio is like, and I'm not saying it should be. However, as it's that mercurial creative element that makes the idea of a game about movies so exciting. If the game simply treats your output as products on a conveyor belt, with none of the variables that makes the real industry so interesting, it's not unreasonable to point that out as a shortcoming.

The fact that you can't choose what research packs to concentrate on is a prime example of that. Why shouldn't you be able to prioritise research into action movies, or colour film, if that's what you want to do?

Instead, you just get things in a set order, and your rivals get them in the same order - and routinely kick your ass regardless.

But this isn't a balanced game experience. It's a somewhat clunky and awkward one with artificial barriers to progress - such as the above problem about running out of actors and directors, as if that's ever been a problem in Hollywood!

Instead, you start with a crappy studio that can only attract a handful of stars. So you make movies with those stars, and then you get penalised for using the same stars. And your studio rating goes down. So you get less people lining up.

There's very little real strategy involved - it's just a question of churning out movies to tie-in with upcoming events, and using the downtime to let your stars practice in the right genre.

Despite all this, I am enjoying the game. I just think it's far from immune to criticism.

Not realistic. Pffh!

You are playing a studio executive. Maybe that's the ultimate problem with the game. It would be much more interesting to play a writer or director trying to get your project made within a byzantine studio system.

So, it's another Lionhead game that promises the stars and ends up being "meh".

Stop saying 'meh', mastronikolas.

It's not "meh". It's a good game.

I just think it's a shame that it doesn't do anything that we haven't already seen in Theme Park or Dungeon Master or Theme Hospital.

I used to play a shareware game called Hollywood Mogul. Text-based, homebrew stuff. But each script was rated based on dozens of criteria. You could order rewrites to punch up the final act, the character arcs, the jokes, everything. You had to negotiate with agents to get the stars you wanted, and they'd ask for director approval. Directors would ask for final cut. You could put your movies in dozens of genres and sub-genres - action comedy, sci-fi horror, etc.

Most importantly, these decisions actually seemed to affect the outcome. Great scripts with the wrong cast would tank. Bad scripts with big stars could make millions, but the sequel would flop.

It looked like crap, but you at least felt like you were in charge of a creative process.

I was just hoping for some of that detail and complexity in this game, that level of freedom, rather than simply putting fountains near their trailer to cheer up a grumpy actor.

Hollywood Mogul is a great game.

Yeah, it'd be nice to see a film break out from its reviews and become a hit. It seems like all it does is look at how many stars it has and that determines how much money it makes. There's not the lightning in a bottle nature that makes the real box office so unpredictable.

The game is fun, but all the issues raised about it in this thread are totally legitimate.

The problem I find is there's more focus on micromanaging your studio than actually working on movies. Why should you have to worry about the upkeep of your buildings and lawns? There are things you are required to do in this game that are totally out of synch with what real producers worry about. There's way too much emphasis on managing resources and people and not near enough on actual films.

Is there any way you can have two screenwriters work on two different scripts? All I can ever seem to do is have the second one help the first one with their script -- it won't let me drop the second screenwriter on anything but Script Pool when I select them.

Only if you have a second scriptwriter's building.

Impressions soured as this thread got longer. I don't think the meh meant a bad Lionhead game, just another in a long line of games that didn't meet the potential from the studio. I'll still be picking this up in a couple of weeks.

Lionhead just always promises too much.

I can't believe there are still people using "meh". If you can't express your problems with something in an intelligible manner, then you shouldn't even bother talking about it. I despise "meh".

Maybe some of you will know the answer to this. There are folders in The Movies folder in My Documents called "Movie Music", "Radio Music" and "Sounds". I assumed these were like the ones in The Sims, and were for custom content, since they're currently empty. But dragging mp3's into them has no effect, and the content never shows up in the game. So does anybody know what these folders are for?

They're folders for your own music depending on where you want them. The thing is that I believe you would have to convert the music files you want from .mp3 to .ogg (Ogg Vorbis).

I don't have the game installed on this machine to check and make sure, but I was pretty sure before I used the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly that I had to convert .mp3 to .ogg. If you google it there should be a simple converter that you can use for free I believe.

And like Dan said, this sure as hell isn't any Civilization IV. I find that the only thing I do anymore to really keep myself entertained in the game is maybe trying to make my own movie that seems smooth and coherent, or at least funny. Other than that I found the whole management of the studio a bit less entertaining and really not as strategic as some claim. It might have been a better game overall if they focused on the filmmaking aspect rather than the studio one.

I found an ogg converter, and it works perfectly. Thanks.

I would agree that running the studio isn't as entertaining as making movies. In fact, I've found that when I do my own custom scripting (which you should if you want your movies to do well; the generated ones don't give you your maximum use of resources), I find it a chore to get back into the game afterward, and I'm just waiting for my script to get filmed so I can get it into post-production, which is my favorite part. Still, I'm finding that making movies is interesting enough to make me play the game.

I do find the online part of the game pretty compelling, though. The idea that you can use your uploaded movies' popularity to buy new props and things is pretty cool. It means that uploading your movies isn't just some goofy showoff business, and it's a motivator to make your movies watchable.

Reviving this thread...finished filming my 19 scene journey into the heart of darkness; which just killed my chances of gaining any awards in the 30's. Just an awful, but hilarious, orgy of scenes featuring a Paltrow look-a-like being knifed, throttled, strangled, and ultimately 'claimed' by some guy after she passes out in a bar.

I hate red exclamation marks...makes one crazy seeing nearly every star and director flashing red all at once. Refusing to work - the lazy bastards.

I'm in the 50's recovering right now. Keeping the films as short as I can to turn around a profit. Nagged the best looking lot award in the last ceremony, yay. Pretty much starting over with some new stars; dumped the older ones. Used starmaker to import Ben Assfleck for my next action romp - Da Phantoms Yo.

Except now I have more worries on my mind - a newly opened pr office, stars wanting fancy trailers and entourages...I can only imagine things will get a little more complicated as I catch up with time.

I was going to start a new thread revisiting people's opinions now that it's been out a while, but since you've resurrected this one...

I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed with what we got. The single-player game is fun a couple of times, but once I'd been through it all, I didn't feel much desire to play it again.

Then there's the online portion. Okay, I can't blame the designers, but this didn't go at all well. I love making the movies themselves; it's once you post them online that it all falls apart. Giving the users carte blanche to assign a simple star rating to every film was a recipe for disaster. It's like IMDB x10. The inmates are running the asylum. One-star bandits, marking movies down for having subtitles instead of voice-over, childlike fascination with any piece that has extensive profanity, high marks for any lame parody of a fan favorite...the ratings system is fifteen kinds of broken now.

Maybe once the new car smell is off the game, and the trolls move on to the latest first person shooter, this will become something worthwhile. But it just isn't worth participating in the train wreck at the moment.

I sold my copy about a week after my last post.

CIVILIZATION IV and now STAR WARS: EMPIRE AT WAR has led me to completely forget about this game until now.

It looks like it just turned into another short sell on big promises from Lionhead, something they're not too unfamiliar with.

with this game not exactly living up to everything it was built up to be...any thoughts on the future quality of Spore?

The game is slowly bugging me as I find more and more of my crew flashing red - sacrificing workers here and there to satisfy the babies I've hired for the past few days who refuse to film any movies...my wife took a pass on playing it. She's still into the cuter version of diablo - fate, and upgrading the cat that follows her around. If I manage to sell this game on ebay at my asking price - I'd have made a profit of 10 bucks.

I'll probably jump onto Age of Empires 3 or Star Wars Empire at War next...unless I see any copies of Rome Total War (gold edition) at the local game store.

I've actually really enjoyed the came and I'm close to finishing my second movie. The trick is to get your studio advanced to the year 2000 and then you can have a studio with everything you need, with actors that never stress out, unlimited funds, and movies made instantly as soon as you put them into production. The main game's easy: you just follow Hollywood's formula of pumping out as many titles as possible as cheap as possible.