The Movies - PC

Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios isn’t just about Black and White you know. In production for some time now has been a highly intriguing concept game – The Movies. Old Molyneux is known for dreaming up games with ambitious premises, and The Movies is no exception, with its professed goal nothing less than pulling the player through the entire history of modern filmmaking.

Starting from humble beginnings on a dusty, Los Angeles lot, you are the mogul behind your very own film studio. Take your studio through the various ages of cinema, starting off with jerky black and white pictures with no sound, and going through such exciting innovations as the advent of the so-called ‘talkies’, the arrival of technicolour, and eventually digital sound.

You can control whatever area of overall production you fancy. As studio director you can decide on the output of your studio, whether you put all your winnings behind an expensive blockbuster, or plump for a string of low budget B-movies. As a talent spotter you go out in search of the hopeful young actors and actresses that you are going to make into stars. As a director you can call every shot in the film.

Filmmaking is broken down as a complex alchemy. Keep an eye on publicity or nobody will know about your picture. Keep an eye on your company of actors – if success goes to their head they can become alcoholics, manic depressives, or worse – old and overweight. Decide on what proportion of the films made will feature romance, or violence. How will you respond to current events? They can affect what your audience wants to watch. Will you pour money into technical research for innovation, or just see what the competition come up with and steal it?

This game looks great fun, and you can post the movies you make on the internet for all to watch. Best of all, sit at your PC and toast your leading lady: ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’.
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