The Movies Game Guide & Walkthrough

Showbusiness can be rough. Many have tried to take advantage of it, most of them ended up drinking booze in a cheap motel a few kilometers from Holly. What makes you think you'll do better? You got the guts? Strong personality? Talent in management? Fine, but even all these perks won't do any good if you haven't got any solid knowledge. Without it, you'll find yourself out of the business even faster than you got in there in the first place. If you want your studio to be a high-flyer, you gotta get some wings for it. Well, here they are, served on a dish especially for you, tested and analyzed. Make some good use of the knowledge contained in this guide. Once you know it all, no arrogant star will play by its own rules with you, no movie production issue will hold you back, and even the respective Academy will have to admit that you, uhm, rock. Go now, read, it's high time to start releasing something worthwhile at last. Lights, camera, well, u know. Action.

All the basic information concerning game interface and so on is not included in this guide, as you can find it in the original manual. Instead of that, we tried to concentrate on the game's essentials - ways to understand its very mechanics.

According to Peter Molyneux, a producer's life is full of strange contrasts between high-importance decision-making and annoying micromanagement. Despite the fact that the movie-production process gets more and more complicated as we advance through the decades, we will still be forced to repeat some basic activities almost endlessly, thus placing you in a chair of a semi-manager and semi-janitor. You have to be quick and dynamic in everything you do. It is possible to earn a million $ by 1930 or win all the awards during the second ceremony, everything is a matter of your reflexes and multitasking abilities. The game's tempo rises to insane levels when you try to crush your opponents from the very beginning, and sometimes resembles an old-school RTS game (one of the ones called by some 'arcade', malevolently). Your efficiency is a function of your quickness and accurate choice-making. Remember that, if you want to reach the top as soon as possible. If you don't, go play football or something and don't waste our time any more. We're talking hardcore, here.

 

The beginning of the game is a kind of tutorial, which lead you through the very basics of studio management. Once you have the possibility to hire your first stars, it is best to divide them into two separate teams of two, specializing in different genres (this fundamental choice can be handled differently of course, but going this way proved to be the most efficient for us). Hire two directors and two actors, then, and try to make them like each other from the spot. Notice that you don't have to socialize the teams with each other, so concentrate on building two separate actor-director relationships. Think about which two genres you want to choose as your main areas of work. Choose carefully, because they will stay this way possibly the whole way through. It isn't as crucial as it may seem, as you can make your way to the top with every genre - just choose the ones you like, then. Some genre populations are more (ex. Action) stable than other ones (Sci-Fi), but all of them have their moments of fame. Rushers (people who want to command and conquer from the beginning) should consider choosing action and comedy, as those genres witness some popularity bonuses early on.

*HINT*: Early in the game, try to make use of your stars all the time, not giving them a moment to waste on their own. Make them talk to each other, practice on sets, and, well, act/direct. Stress is not an issue in the beginning, so you can be a little devilish for them.

You won't regret making your stars each others' friends.

Always buy and build everything that becomes available. There are no useless investments in The Movies. Once you gain full control of the studio, start constantly using both your teams, releasing low-budget movies. When one team is working on the set, the other one has time to socialize, rest, and most of all practice on sets (consider building a second Stage set so you can practice Comedy even when the second one is being used in shooting).

When it comes to managing the space of your studio lot, it is enough to remember about a few simple rules. Most of all, group all your sets in one part of the lot (later they will be taking most of the available space anyway), what will make movie shooting a little bit faster. It is also useful to group all the buildings that have employee-wannabes standing in lines in front of them. It helps mostly because you can make anyone do anything in this game, so if for example lack scientists, you can always hire an aspiring janitor.

It is essential that you produce scripts *all* the time, hiring a maximum possible number of writers to do this. It doesn't matter, that we won't be using like 90% of their work. Scriptwriters are never overworked and every script they prepare gives them a little experience bonus - and that's useful. Get yourself a Star & Script Selling Facility and sell scripts like mad, while saving the best ones for yourself of course (the difference between "best" ones and "to be sold" ones isn't usually too big, like 1/5 or 2/5 of a star, but hey - it still counts).

*HINT*: When your writers produce a script with a nice score, but you notice that the stages it utilizes have low Novelty Values, go to Custom Script Office and change it. Even if you get your script a complete U-Turn (i.e. change scenes, characters, costumes) it will maintain the score and get a higher Novelty.

This is how this guide was made. Well, almost.

Invest in lot attractiveness from the very beginning, covering the whole terrain with green grass and spawning lots and lots of ornamentation. AI doesn't actually score what you may call "sense" in their placing, so don't trouble yourself with creating pedantic patterns. Randomness is quicker. Try to make the whole terrain that counts (empty unused space isn't included in your Lot Prestige stat) appear green when you turn on the ornament-placing mode. That's an easy way to get the Most Prestigious Studio Lot award during the second ceremony. Each award you win gets you some very useful bonuses for the following 5 years. It's worth struggling for them, as if you manage to get most of them during one ceremony, you are destined to succeed.

You can't fail with perks like that.

Movie production process gets more complicated and longer over time, and the teams we created at the beginning will have to expand. In time, releasing a movie will take so much time that you will have to consider shooting two at a time. It will be necessary to hire some additional extras and crew members, even actors. When you build Intermediate Script Office, you'll need two actors for each movie, and a little bit later - three. The total number of 8 stars is not easy to manage, but it pays to take the risk. Always remember to take care about your stars' relationships. It is annoying, but nevertheless worthwhile.

*HINT*: Your range of possibilities and areas of business will widen with time (science, PR) and it is crucial that you utilize all of them. Don't ignore any aspect of the game, as it will noticeably hit your potential. When you build a PR Office, invest in awareness, when you build a clinic - get your stars some surgery, etc.

That redhead stole the script, after him!

Try to get your movies', stars', and studio's ratings as high as possible. The criteria the game uses and hints on how to impact particular parameters are found further in the guide. Notice that you only need one superstar in your ranks to win awards and certificates. You don't have to shed blood to get every star's ranking up by 1/5 of the star. What counts is a collective of artists with moderately high notes and places in the rankings. If you followed the above plan of creating two separate teams you probably won't have any problem with that, as all your stars will raise their rankings steadily. If your decisions throughout the game are accurate enough, using that strategy you can overtake your competition and dominate the market like on the screen below.

Nothing to worry about before the Ceremony, is there?

The Movies is quite an easy game, ruled by simple and mechanic rules. It's not a problem to understand them all and use them "against" it. Now we will tell you everything about the criteria you have to meet if you want to raise all of your rankings. Once you get them all, you'll know perfectly what to emphasize and how to behave in certain situations. Let's get going, then.

Your studio's rating can reach any status between 0 and 5 stars. Getting the rating high enough is highly dependent on achieving satisfactory revenue, and is required to win some of the awards and certificates. It is worth to know all the factors that determine our score to satisfy the rating-making "big brother". Here are the details.

Capital - It's quite obvious: the more money you get, the better the score. Unfortunately, maintaining the high score will not allow us to make some serious investments early on. Remember about that when the ceremony is at hand or you are trying to push the rating up to get a certificate.

Movies - Difficult to maximize. It reflects the star rating of your latest movies *and* their number (the more the better). Luckily, through most of the game it will increase by itself, as will everything when you expand your company more and more.

Stars - Not surprisingly, out stars' ratings are the factor here. If you follow the advice from the appropriate part of the guide, everything should be OK here. Remember that it is some kind of average value, connected with all of your stars. It is better to have 5 actors with 3-4 stars than one 5-star high-flyer.

Lot Prestige - To get some additional info on the factors included here, right click on the "I" in Production Office (as on the above screenshot). They are as follows.

Attractiveness

Counts all the decorations you place all over your lot - trees, benches, lanterns, cars etc. Replacing the default sand with stylish, green grass is important as well. When you turn on the decoration-placing mode, the terrain becomes covered with red and green dots, indicating the particular places' attractiveness. Try to eliminate all the red, placing some additional goods nearby.

Connectedness

Connect all the new buildings you raise to the "net" of paths, otherwise you can have problems with that.

Maintenance

Maintenance state of the buildings lowers with time, and the only way to make it better is to hire some builders. Hiring a handful of them is advised.

Catering

Always get the best food serving facilities and increase their numbers if you get the message suggesting to do so.

Sanitation

Take care of the number and quality of restrooms. Build the newest types, destroy the old ones.

Ornamentation

This parameter is somewhat connected with Attractiveness, but concentrates on modernity of ornaments you buy. Always get the newest and most expensive decorations (you can also get rid of the outdated ones).

Cleanliness

Studio's cleanliness can be maintained by hiring a number of janitors and placing a big amount of trash bins.

Awards - The more awards you get the better. The categories in which awards are offered usually coincide with the usual ratings, so it's not really hard to get them. Just follow this guide and you'll do fine.

One of the most important rules in the movies is that you can make every employee do everything. If you want to, you can make a superstar out of a janitor and vice versa (although cleaning up trash won't be good for the star's mood). The most important people in the movie's credits are of course actors and a director. Hiring them is a choice that deserves deliberation. Before you decide to hire somebody, check out his statistics. Remember that potential employee's experience isn't the most important factor at all, because it is easily built up during the practice sessions (the situation is different when you need a star right away to, for example, fill in a gap in the credits to start shooting immediately). If you want to save yourself a lot of trouble later on, choose your stars looking at their resistance towards stress and addictions. What you're looking for are perks like "Doesn't stress easily" or so, and beware of "Loves alcohol" etc. It isn't really complicated, but quite often you won't really have the choice. Probably the biggest bug in The Movies' is the lack of people looking for a job. The point is to choose the best ones from the very narrow range you have, then.

Grumpy stars can be a pain in the arse if you don't take action early enough. Their tantrums, addictions and unexpected walkaways from the sets can delay the movie production to the extent that can cause serious financial problems (mostly in later phase of the game, when you can't really react with producing another movie on a short notice). To avoid such situations always monitor the Stress parameter of your stars, as it is the reason for 90% of Star-related problems. The Boredom factor isn't really an issue, because you can always make a star do some practicing (and thus kill two birds with one stone).

Lives to Eat, Easily Stressed, Easily Bored, Can't turn down a drink? Don't call us, we'll call you.

Three ways of de-stressing your stars are food, alcohol, and having fun with all the studio attractions like benches, playfields or trailers. In a way, it even helps just to give stars some free time to spend on their own, but it is the least efficient way ("let me do the thinking", you say). Food is a safer way than alcohol when it comes to addictions, but on the other hand it isn't as fast and effective. The only thing we have to keep in mind when letting a star drink or eat is how likely he is to become an addict. If he does, his work's effectiveness will suffer greatly and our movies will take even longer to shoot. The only solution then is the Rehab (which takes a lot of valuable time). Remember that sometimes you can just drag deserting stars back to the set. It isn't best for their mood, but helps to finish shooting. Try to avoid sending stars to Rehab during the movie production, it takes really too long for that.

Stars have even more stats than our studio. A number of Certificates requires that we have at least one high-rating superstar, reaching successive milestones all the way to 5 stars. Such a personality among our ranks will surely be noticed by the Academy, and will rise our overall studio score as well. Remember, that you don't need more than 1 or 2 superstars. Managing more of them would be too troublesome and eventually pointless.

Movie Success - This parameter reflects the rating of the few last movies of the star. What determines the movie score is detailed in the next chapter, and probably you won't have anything particular to maximize this, it will happen just as effect of releasing high quality movies.

Salary - The salary should be raised step by step, so the star is happy all the time. The salary's effect on the star's rating is maxed out at around 100,000$.

Performances - Different from Movie Success, here the only thing that counts are our star's latest performances, consisting of his Experience, Mood and Genre Fit. In most cases young and good looking actors have an advantage here, but for example in Comedy it's completely the other way round.

Image - Looks, Physique and Fashion play the role here. Fashion can be maxed out by regular makeovers. Physique can be tended to with performing some physical activities. Once you discover Cosmetic Surgery, you'll be able to perform 3 different operations: Nip/Tuck (Looks, makes the star look ax. 20 years younger), Liposuction (Physique), and Implants (Looks).

Everybody 1 2 step.

Entourage - Star's reaction for his number of assistants. Assigning 6 of them maxes out this parameter, although it is not recommended to do this unless you're trying to reach a milestone or something like that. Instead, just try to keep this factor high enough to make the star happy for the moment. Workforce is too valuable in the game to waste it in such a way.

Trailer - Indicates how happy the star is with his trailer. The relation is obvious, the better the trailer (and more fancy decorations nearby) the happier the star. Each trailer has its "range", a zone in which you can place ornaments to raise its rating. Try to regularly replace the old decorations with the newest ones (the game doesn't actually point out that a 30's car in perfect shape can actually be more valuable than the newest sports car, but let's not be cruel).

Press - This can be raised either by placing photographers near the star when he does something interesting from their point of view (throwing tantrum, talking to somebody etc.), or making the star hold a press conference. The second way is way faster and less annoying.

Isn't that sweet?

Relationships - Now this can be irritating, as rising it takes a considerable amount of time. To make stars like each other, we have to manually force them to talk to each other lots and lots of times. This helps their star rating and the movies they cooperate in, but is nevertheless annoying to do. We begin building relationships just anywhere, and then take it to the Bar, VIP Bar, Restaurant, and VIP Restaurant, in that order. Funny, though, 'cause they keep saying things like "let's go something more intimate", but behave exactly the same thing everywhere we take them.

Awards - It's easy to guess that the number of awards the star has won is the factor here. It isn't difficult at all, as long as you keep releasing good movies.

Just as our studio and stars, also our movies are evaluated from 0 to 5 stars. Reaching high scores here is a crucial element of success in both financial and rankings sense. Releasing a chart-topping movie isn't any easy when you don't know what factors decide its rating, and they have roots in almost every region of our business. Let's try to analyze what we have to do in order to get as high in the rankings as possible.

Script Quality - You'll need both experienced writers and a modern Script Office - these can be unlocked by getting some of the Certificates. The better the Script Office is, the better and more time&money stealing scripts you get. To ensure the high experience for the writers, just keep ordering new scripts over and over again, not giving them a moment to rest (they don't have mood parameters on their own so don't worry). You don't have to use all of them, do you? In fact, you'll be using like 10 or 5 percent of scripts you make this way (sell of can the rest), but the experience writers get will be of great value to you.

Star Performance - A very important factor indicating how well the stars did in the movie. Three elements count here: Mood, Experience, and Genre Fit. The first one has been taken care of in Nannying the Stars section. The perfect situation is when the mood bar is pulsating green, but it is difficult to achieve it without any award bonuses or, uhm, alcohol. The Experience's influence on Performance is obvious, so don't hesitate to make your stars practice a lot. Genre Fit indicates how well the star's Looks, Age and Physique fit the genre of the movie. As we said when detailing the stars' parameters, young and good looking artists are usually in a better situation, except Comedy.

Nothing like a bar chit-chat.

Star Relationships - Relationships between stars engaged in the movie. We can make them better by forcing the stars to talk to each other (see Nannying the Stars) or making them practice together.

Repair of Sets - Sets' maintenance value. To ensure it is high enough, manually order some workers to repair the set before it is shot at.

Crew Experience - The crew's experience grows very very slow with every movie they work on. You can't do anything about it, just keep cranking out movies.

Star Power - The engaged stars' ratings value.

Genre Interest - You have to monitor it when ordering the script. It often happens that you aren't able to choose the most popular ones, because your stars don't have experience in them, but can't really do anything about it. Watch for the events appearing on the timeline on top of the screen, as they determine the genre interest. You can also boost it with some bonuses from Academy rewards. Early in the game, when we aren't so strongly biased yet, choose the most popular genres to be released (that will be Action, probably).

Novelty Value - Each new set you build has a 100% Novelty, which degrades with every use in a movie, so it is important to diversify the sets you use.

Technology - Closely connected to the pace of scientific research you conduct in you laboratory, in Movie-Making section. Focus on this area and the "cutting edge" bonus you get will greatly help you overtake the competition.

"My fellow Americans..."

PR & Marketing - Two factors play their role in here: rising the awareness and mixing it with appropriate opening budget. If we invest too much when releasing a movie that is not talked about, it will be but a loose of money. We can raise awareness by dragging the movie to the Publicity Office. The process takes a few minutes and can be repeated several times, so you can perform it every time shooting stops, no matter the reason (for example when you have to send a star for a drink). You can also do some PR before the movie is shot. A similar effect can be achieved by making one of our stars engaged in the project hold a press conference. In that case we also raise the star's Press parameter (but impact his Mood).

Certificates in The Movies reflect the overall level of advancement that we reach. To get each one of them you'll have to meet a range of requirements, usually concerning our ratings (stars, studio and movies). When following everything we pointed out in the guide, you shouldn't have any real problems in achieving most of them. The last ones are difficult to get, even for an experienced player. There are no time limits when it comes to Certificates, so you don't have to make them your first priority. However, the usefulness of the awards speaks for getting them possibly early.

Name

Requirements

Rewards

Wannabe Big Cheese

- release 5 movies;

- earn 500,000 $ (you don't have to have the money on your account, it's the profit that counts, even when already spent);

- sum of your movie ratings reaches 5 stars.

Custom Script Office

Junior Studio Manager

- have a star with a 2-star rating;

- release a 2-star movie;

- reach the 2-star studio rating.

Forest Set

Promising Studio Manager

- save 1,000,000 on your account;

- get 2 movie awards;

- release 5 movies with rating above 2 stars.

Proficient Script Office

Respected Studio Head

- have a star with a 3-star rating;

- release a 3-star movie;

- reach the 3-star studio rating;

- release 15 movies.

Publicity Office

Celebrated Studio Head

- earn 7,000,000 $ (see above);

- sum of your movie ratings reaches 35 stars;

- get 8 movie awards;

- save 4,000,000$ on your account.

Wall Set

Highflying Moviemaker

- release 5 movies with rating above 3 stars;

- have a star with a 4-star rating;

- release a 4-star movie;

- reach the 4-star studio rating.

First Class Script Office

Big Fish

- release 25 movies;

- earn 15000000 $ (see above);

- sum of your movie ratings reaches 60 stars;

- save 6,000,000$ on your account.

Palatial Trailer

Movie Mogul

- have a star with a 5-star rating;

- release a 5-star movie;

- reach the 5-star studio rating;

- get 25 awards;

- release 5 movies with rating above 4 stars.

Municipal Building Set

Movie-making Legend

Be The Boss :-)

School Library Set and Starship Bridge Set

A lot of work awaits you before you can get your stars trailers like *that*.

You've got the knowledge, so now use it to take the movie industry - by force, if necessary. Once you dominate all your AI opponents, don't forget to make some cool movies in the Custom Script Office and show them all around the Internet. We'll be glad to see them, too. Feel free to post links to your works in your comments.