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Making home movies that won’t embarrass your parents
Thankfully the process of making movies is highly streamlined. Drag a writer to the scriptwriting building and the game will tell you what type of movie audiences are looking for, drop the writer on the a genre, and off they go to write what I’m sure is an award winning movie. Research and time will later allow you to build offices that crank out better films.
Once a script is ready to go, filming is as simple as dragging the script to the casting office. From here crew members will automatically work get ready, and all you’ll need to do is choose some stars and a director. Like a real-time strategy game stars earn experience in a genre each time they make a movie. You can drop actors/directors on an empty set to bulk up on a particular genre before starting filming.
The more familiar people are with a genre the better the film will turn out in the end, which is important because in-game critics in The Movies are more cynical than even your average jaded game journalist. The impact of critics on films and their earnings potential varies given how popular the genre is, and how many famous faces you packed in front of the camera.
In practice it’s easy enough to get a handle on what makes one movie better than another, but the game does seem a little overly critical of your early films. And while you may love really digging in and making your own films by crafting custom scripts I just let my writers do all the hard work. Sort of like the opposite of my life.
The Peter Molyneux curse strikes again?
The only thing holding me back from smothering The Movies with juicy praise is the annoying gameplay mechanic that raises it’s ugly head about 15 minuets into the game. I’m talking mainly about the near complete lack of people to hire. For a game that uses people as a resource to man cameras, clean toilets, and act... there’s a frustrating lack of hirable people.
Because films slowly begin to require more crew and extras I had to start pulling my janitors and builders off their duties so I could keep making films. In five hours of playing I saw four people show up looking for work at my studio. The lack of human resources crippled my ability to produce films on time and limited my cash growth which in turn kept me from winning awards... which kept me from hitting in-game earmarks... which kept me from unlocking new tech like the publicity building... which I could have really used.
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