I walked onto my virtual film lot with big dreams and big shoes to fill. The predecessor of movie sim games of the past weighed heavy on my shoulders as “The Movies” by Lionhead Studios is a beloved classic of its era. Moviehouse has a lot to offer on its take on a movie studio sim. Your first step on that journey is to select a name and logo, and then hire a writer, as, with all good stories, a writer can make or break your film. Your talent pool is small at first, but will surely grow once you crawl your studio outside of its indie film roots.
Once your script is done, next comes adding a young visionary director to produce your words from page to screen, and I don’t mean a smartphone screen as this demo plants you in the 1980s to start, but when films were brimming with magic and ET just wanted to phone home.
Your brilliant or arrogant director, depending on what traits they possess, will ask what length the movie should be. In my time with the game, I was only able to ever make 15min indie short films. You could say we were a small company for sure in that regard. Next is the casting process which sees you spend anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000 searching for a lead role and supporting role. I did notice that I could cheese the game and repeatedly hire the same talent and suffer no penalties for doing so. I’d like to pretend that we were all friends and they are doing us a favor by starring in overly expensive home movies.
You are only able to see 6 of the 12 genres of films in the demo, but the 6 that were available worked for me. Horror is the standout. I couldn’t help myself and of course wanted to make my own versions of Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
After your film is done wrapping the next step is to generate some buzz so people will actually want to see the darn thing. The best place to do that is to take it to the film festival circuit. There your film will be judged and gather enough buzz and fans for distributors to want to actually distribute your next classic. Later in the demo, you can go the self-distribute route and pay for your own promotion to get buzz and fans and turn even more profit.
All was well until my poor Rundown Studios went bankrupt and we were bought out by a major studio. After that point, we had to share all profits we made 50% with our new bosses until we could buy our way out of debt. The game is tough at first until you get the swing of things. I played two different studios and went into debt on both! I was able to start making more money once my studio was 10 years in, so yes that would be 1990, but I didn’t yet have enough to buy myself out of my purchase agreement.
My time spent with Moviehouse was good and I look forward to its full release sometime this fall. For more news on the latest game releases, check out my coverage of Anger Foot, and for everything else check out CPG.
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