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November 16, 2005
Games : Game review: The Movies
Peter Molyneux is one of the most consistently innovative computer game designers in the industry (like Chris Crawford and Will Wright). While there are other game designers who produce consistently excellent games, Peter Molyneux always seems to try and "push the edge of the envelope", with the result that while some of his games soar skyward, frequently defining new genres of games, others simply crash and burn. My sense from interviews I have seen with him is that Molyneux is content with that track record – he'd rather try and fail than not try at all.
Which bring me to his latest game: The Movies.
I can thankfully report that this venture is in my opinion a resounding success. The Movies is actually two games in one: It is at one level a classic "sim" game – allowing you to run a movie studio – managing the lot, keeping your "talent" happy (and sober), getting movies out the door, and hopefully winning a few awards in the process. At another level, the game provides the tools for the player to write, shoot, edit, and release their own films (Molyneux's company even provides a web site where people can publish their finished films to earn points that can be used to download new props for their movies).
The sim (so far) has proven to be fairly enjoyable. While it involves the usual sort of micromanagement which is inherent in sim games, the user interface is one of the best I have seen, making the process both easy and entertaining. There are clearly different strategies you can apply to the game, and it is not clear to me at this point if any are optimal. Even the layout of the studio involves subtle factors which influence the game.
There are two complaints about the sim I have seen in other reviews on the web. First, movies, even bad ones, always seem to make money. My observation is that all movies have ticket sales, and if you stick to doing simple movies, the production costs remain low enough that you do make money. However, on my first try at producing a blockbuster, my production costs went up significantly (I had to halt production at one point to let an actor calm down). I don't rule out a "Waterworld", "Ishtar" or "Heavens Gate" type disaster is possible with this game. The other complaint I have seen is that late in the game (when actors start demanding "personal assistants", etc.) that you run out of manpower as the number of people applying for jobs at your studio is outstripped by the number of new positions to fill. I have not seen this yet; but the game documentation does say that the rate at which people apply for jobs depends on the prestige of your study. It may well be that the game has built into it a vicious cycle where a failing studio can't hire enough people to turn things around. If true (and again, I haven't seen it yet), then while it may be realistic, I would view this as a flaw in a game which is supposed to be fun.
And then there's the movie making tools. Now before people get excited, this is not a completely free-form mechanism. The game includes a finite number of sets, and a large but finite number of shots (erroneously called "scenes" in the game) with which you can build your movie. A typical "scene" might be a medium shot of someone walking in a door (which can be shot on any set that has a door). That shot can then be tweaked for mood (is the actor happy, sad, angry), camera angle, props (in the person carrying a gun or an umbrella), etc. However, you can't have the person summersault through the door – you are stuck with stringing together the existing shots to produce your movie. My observation is that while you can't do everything with this mechanism, you can certainly do enough to create entertaining films. The diversity of options is good enough that you can do what you want, even if the result may not exactly look like what you see in your mind.
The game allows you to use both of these modes independently if you want. When in sim mode, you can let the game's AI write your scripts and edit the films for you. Likewise you can start the game in "sandbox" mode where you can turn off things like actor-tantrums, shooting time, etc., allowing you to just focus on creating films. However the real fun comes when you mix the two – running the studio and writing and editing the films it produces. Actually, I think you must do this in order to become a top-ranked studio. The game's AI-writers just do not produce scripts that the game's AI-critics and AI-audiences really like. I don't think this is a flaw, I think it is an intentional part of the design that you need to do you own film making if you want to "win".
As an example of what I am talking about – the AI-critics definitely favor scenery changes in how they rate films – your reviews suffer if you keep using the same set over and over again. However, when I ask the AI-writers to develop scripts, they quite often use the same set for a whole movie, and then use the same set again for the next movie. When I relied on the AI-writers, I found that only a third of the sets I built tended to get used in their movies. By writing my own scripts, I was able to produce movies that were ranked much better by the AI-critics.
So, "two thumbs up and five stars" for this game.
Posted by Steven at November 16, 2005 05:36 PM
