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The Movies

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The Movies is a PC simulation game created by Lionhead Studios for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X. It was released on November 8, 2005 in the United States of America, and November 11, 2005 in Europe after reaching gold status on October 8, 2005. The Mac version will be released on September 22, 2006 in the UK. In The Movies, players take the role of a Hollywood film mogul, running a studio and creating films. Much has been made about the film-making aspect of the game, as it allows players to easily create viewable works or machinima. Many consider it similar to the early 1990s film production game 'Stunt Island'; the game is also similar to the 1988 game Charlie Chaplin and the 1996 game Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair.

Contents

General gameplay

In The Movies, players get the chance to run their own movie studio. The game can be divided into three main areas — designing the movie studio, forging the careers of movie stars, and making movies. It is possible to focus on any of those areas that appeal most, and spend less time on the others.

The game plays through from the birth of cinema to the present day and into the near future, with all the technology and historical advances that occur along that timeline. After the movies have been made, they can be played back for the viewer to watch. It is possible once the movie is made to add voice, text and music in post-production. The movies can then be exported and shared or uploaded to a website (The Movies Online) for anyone who wishes to watch them.

Staff management

The two most important types of staff in the game are the actors and directors. In order to keep them in a positive mood, they need a high salary, a decent image, a good quality trailer and a large entourage. If these are not met, the actors and directors can become alcoholics or over-eaters, losing popularity, while actors who dress fashionably, look attractive (with the help of cosmetic surgery) and act well can become very popular.

Minor staff include extras, janitors, scientists, scriptwriters, and crew members.

Rival Studios

The first four rival studios your studio will compete against are the following:

Landscaping

In order to increase the 'prestige' of the studio lot, the studio must be neat, free of litter, well laid out and with areas of grass, trees and decoration. Buildings must also be linked together by paths. Buildings and sets also decay, making them unusable, and decreasing the quality of movies that they appear in.

Movies

There is no limit on movie length. The average movie length is between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, but user created films can be as long as budget will allow (although a 10 minute film might require over 20 game years of filming).

Once the actors, extras, director and crew are assigned to a film, production begins, with the entire staff of the film travelling between sets to film the movie.

The sandbox mode allows films to be created without undergoing the lengthy production process, and with budgets of over $100 million.

Scripts

Players are able to pick a script provided by the game or write their own. Provided scripts take longer to write in game time, while user-written scripts take longer to write in real time.

To write a movie, for every scene the player first chooses a set where the scene will take place, and then the action that will occur during the scene (for example: 'Living Room 1: Enter Scared'). The actors can be chosen, extras assigned roles and mood, lighting and weather settings altered. This is repeated for every scene. In the game there are special buildings for script writing. Usually, you start with a small script writing building, in which six script writers can work on a script, this office is limited to creating one star scripts. The next building, the intermediate script writing office, comes in a basic pack, some time after the first awards ceremony, it has space for six scriptwriters, and this has a limit of a two star script. The last scriptwriting building is won by meeting the criteria for an award. The Proficient Scriptwriting office can have six scriptwriters like before, but each writer can now work on their own script (effectively allowing for 6 scripts be written at once). This building creates complex scripts usually nine scenes long, and is limited to a three star script. The last building is won through an award also. It allows you to create your own script. It is limited to what your highest scripting office can produce (so if you have the Proficient Scriptwriting office, you are limited to three stars).

Post production

Once production has finished, the film undergoes post production, where music, sound effects, subtitles, speech and titles to the movie. Cuts and changes can also be made to the length and order of the scenes, making editing the film easier.

The game allows for lip-synching, matching the speech to the actors. However, this only works for short sound files, and only shows basic lip movements.

Genres

The film can be one of five genres: action, comedy, horror, romance or science fiction.

The main effect genre choice has is that real world events affect popularity of different genres (The Vietnam War decreases popularity of action, the Space Race increases the popularity of science fiction, and World War II decreases the popularity of horror).

Sets

Sets are the constructions in the studio lot where the cast and crew assemble to shoot movies. The sets are divided into categories such as urban, western and rural. Different scenes have different actions available (a bar might feature many drinking related actions, while a street would feature various car actions).

Sets can be used to practice movies and increase genre experience; ex. reading through the script on the set of a spaceship increases science fiction experence.

Technology

The game starts in 1920 and continues indefinitely, although technologies tail off in 2020. As a result, early films are in black and white without sound, while modern movies feature digital sound and computer-generated imagery. Inventing these innovations before rival studios can increase the quality of your films, but hiring more researchers can cost more than the extra income the advances provide.

Marketing

Once you have reached Level 3 in story mode, the publicity office becomes available. This allows actors to hold press conferences and organises marketing for your movie. Once a publicity office is built, players can also choose an advertising budget when releasing a film. A heavily-advertised movie can make much more money, but using too much advertising can result in the movie being 'over-exposed'.

Expandability and customization

The game has been designed to be mod-able. Lionhead has stated that they might release the actual tools they used to create scenes, shortly after the release of the game, along with expansion packs. Alongside this, unofficial mods are possible, leading to extra props, sets and clothing designs.

The Movies website contains a section called the Propshop [link] which lets users purchase additional content using virtual credits, earned through other achievements online. The propshop is regularly updated with new props, sets and costumes.

The Movies has many virtual and other "Easter Eggs", undocumented features, unannounced features, unannounced content, oddities, glitches inside "The Movies" including all current EP's patches.

Actors

As actors and actresses make more films, they become more experienced in the various genres, increasing the quality of the movie in general. A good relationship between actors can similarly increase movie quality, especially for romantic films. While an attractive, fit actor is appropriate for a romantic film, comedy films rely on less attractive, older actors.

There are two types of animal in the game: horses and dogs. Both interact with the actors, but are limited in actions; horses can only carry actors, while dogs can fetch a ball, chase a thief or attack an actor.

At this time there will not be child actors included in the game. It's been explained that to create children, a unique skeleton would have to be done requiring completely different animations and programing. Child actors are something that could be included in a future expansion pack.

Crew

All films require crew members to carry out the filming process. Early films just require a camera operator and a clapperboard operator, but more advanced films require boom mike operators, lighting controllers and other specialised crew members.

Money

A key element of Story mode is money. Money can only be produced from box-office sales and the sale of scripts and stars. The staff must be paid, and construction of sets cannot continue if the studio is in debt.

File sharing

Once the movie has been completed, it can be saved in a proprietary file format for transferring to other PC users, or WMV format for online sharing. Outstanding player-made films will be nominated for a Stanley, Lionhead's version of the Oscars.

Costume and painting

Actors can be dressed in different costumes, with millions of possible permutations, with clothing, hair style, tattoos, jewellery and other cosmetic options. If the outfit chosen for an actor is fashionable in the current era (waistcoats in the 1930s, floral patterns in the 1960s, etc), the actor will receive a popularity boost.If when the stars clothes go out of fashion and you do not change them the stars image will go down and make them unhappy.

The Movies Online

The Movies Online ([link]) is the online aspect of The Movies. As well as its own section on the general Lionhead forums, TMO allows players to upload their own movies to the Internet for others to review and criticize. This translates into Virtual Credits (VCs), a form of virtual currency that is used to buy new props, costumes, sets and to advertise online movies.

Expansion pack

The Movies: Stunts & Effects is the first expansion pack for The Movies, it adds stunts, stunt men, new sets and costumes to the game. It also now includes a 'free-cam'; giving total control over the camera position and movement (previously the camera was fixed in the scene presets). The game was released in June 2006.

New Features Include

ESRB Rating: T

Console release

The game was originally going to be ported to PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox, but development of the console ports was halted and the game officially cancelled on February 7, 2006. Poor sales was the reason cited for the cancellation. On February 8, 2006, Lionhead Studios announced that the console version may still be released, it just wouldn't be published by Activision.

Mac Specific Extras

The Mac version of the game, published by Feral Interactive, will contain several extra features. These include compatibility with iMovie, GarageBand and iTunes.

KMVS

While in gameplay there is a radio station playing called KMVS. For each significant cultural era (eg the Red Scare) there is a DJ with a different personality and favoured genre of music. The change in music is as follows:

Events

At certain times newsworthy events will occur (and be read out on KMVS, but not by the current DJ). There are two broadcasts for each event: a prediction, which usually occurs a couple of years before the actual event, and an actual bulletin). These generally shift the genre interests of the public after occuring.

Although events can be read separately on the timeline, the KMVS broadcasts are typically parodies, gross understatements, or exaggerations of the event or opinions at the time regarding the event (for example, when the news broadcasts about the computer arrive, they state optimistically that by 2050 computers will be no bigger than a car and be able to store about 5000 words, and the various Red Scare broadcasts claim that communism is literally a viral infection)

DJ's

The radio station, KMVS, employs a range of DJs over the course of the game. The DJs are caricatures of the stereotypes of the era they are active in.

References

External links

Official sites

Fansites

Other media

 

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