The Movies

The Movies isn't trying to convey any moral message like our previous entry, the apocalyptic Defcon. Instead it seeks to show you the dynamics of running your own movie studio, starting in circa 1925. You must construct business buildings, sets, and other supporting facilities and use them to hire your writers, directors, cast, crew, and supporting staff. Then you direct your staff to make the aforementioned movies in one of five genres: action, horror, sci-fi, romance, and comedy.

Movie quality, and how well it does in the box office and the awards ceremonies, is determined by how good the script is, how skilled the actors and directors are in the genre, how good the actors' and directors' relationships are with each other, how big a star the actors and director are, how skilled the crew is, how well repaired the set is, how much interest the audience has in the genre, and how novel the set or genre is. Quite a lot, huh? It allows you to use several different means to achieve making a good movie.

Actors and directors are interesting creatures in and of themselves. Their appeal is based on their image (fashion, looks, physique), star power, and salary. Interestingly enough, it is not based on their talent in various genres, talent just serves as a means to gain star power which is received upon making a good movie. This, I think, is pretty good commentary on the status of Hollywood today.

There's more than I can really cover in a blog post. The game has several more features which I could go into detail on, including the ability to allow you to make and upload your own movies to the internet, and the ability to customize the costumes and appearance of your actors and directors. It all reminds me a bit of the Sims, but instead of being so open-ended, it gives you a goal to work towards and many different ways to get there.

Once again, its another very tempting $20 game.