 - Design your own studio and run it from the early days of cinema through present day and beyond in Story Mode by managing studio resources, investing in RD and maximizing box office success
- Make your own movies - Make movies that appeal to the masses in Story Mode or in Sandbox Mode you can jump into any era and create your dream movie.
- Control the destiny of your cast and crew - Fire and hire them, turn unknowns into movie stars, and take full creative control over script selection and the content of the movies you'll create.
- More than 30 hours of continuous gameplay, thousands of exciting movie characters, and limitless options allow you to vary just about everything
- Show the world your talents - Post your movies to the web for all to see.
List Price: $19.99
Lowest Price: $5.00 
Product Description: The Movies answers a question that many of us have had: What if YOU were in charge of a movie studio? Imagine if you could make any movie you wanted, any way you wanted. Would you create epic action films? Campy b-movies? You can make it big in Hollywood by building the ultimate movie studio. Choose the scripts, control budgets, design & build sets, and settle into the director's chair and see if you can make a hit. Once you've created your box-office smashes, you can even watch them -- adding your own voiceovers and saving them to your hard drive or publishing to a Web site. Amazon.com Product Description: Imagine you could make any movie you wanted to. Imagine you could pluck someone from obscurity and make him or her the hottest star in Tinseltown. Imagine that you had control of an entire movie studio, competing with others to create a string of box office smashes. Imagine being able to use your judgement alone, deciding whether success lies with epic action pictures or lots of low budget, hammy 'B' movies. Will the stars you've so lovingly groomed develop monstrous egos - refusing to accept that they are now too old to play the romantic leads that made them famous? You can help, but there are only so many times you can send them to fat farms and plastic surgeons. Will you watch your movies being shot or do you want to direct the action yourself? Will you decide to innovate and introduce the talkies, color or digital sound before any of your rivals? Or will you let the other studios make the investments, leaving you to jump on the bandwagon if the new technology becomes popular? Many of the things you've ever read or heard about Hollywood are right here in The Movies - from stars having affairs and hitting the bottle to teams of genius filmmakers creating the box office hit of the year. Movie mogul, talent spotter or film director. You can be one or you can be all three. That's the magic of The Movies. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-03-21
Great Fun
Despite what I've read in many other reviews for this item, I think The Movies is a great game. I don't really have any bugs or problems that really ruin the game, but yes there are a few very very minor things.
The game mode is awesome, and I'm not frusturated or having any trouble doing anything. If you're a frequent gamer, it's not hard to figure out the tools and even if you're not there are instructions with it. Yes, you have to unlock certain things, but that's the fun of the game. I'm not having any financial problems and I'm the number one studio and have the numebr one ranked star (this stuff changes pretty often though). It just takes some thinking and strategy.
Creating your own movies does take a while and is kind of annoying, so I don't really do that, and if you get the stunts expansion back everything is twenty times better (the moviemaking and the regular gameplay). If you like building games such as Sim Theme Park, SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon, you know, building games like that, you'll love The Movies. It's a really fun, entertaining game that keeps you busy for a while. Rating: 
Date: 2008-03-19
I tried....really.
You will WANT to like this game but I don't know about any of the rest of you I found a number of things very frustrating
1. The tutorial is a waste of time and you have to find out a lot stuff on your own and I don't have the patience. For instance you are given the ability to add sound to your movies and then no instruction on how to make them appropriate for the context of the film. You are given the ability to slice scenes together and given no test audience to find out how a particular combo will work. A lot of this is trial and error that is all I am going to say.
2. Lots of detail but details about the wrong things that I feel are unimportant. Do I really need to have my grade constantly bought down because the paths connecting my building don't all link up? Do I really need to know that my actor or actress is "off to squeeze one out?" I can always take comfort in the fact that my studio may produce crappy movies..but it has really clean restrooms.
3. I don't care that you're feeling bad and had to stop at the bar on your way to the set make the movie for god's sake!! This happens constantly even when you think your doing a good job of keeping your stars happy.
Overall-I'm not saying its necessarily a bad game because its not the radio dj's are hilarious and there is a lot of detail but its not something you can play casually and just have fun there are to many details that hold you back. If you REALLY want an in-depth game you can try this and maybe you can make some sense out of it. I'm just giving you my impression.
Rating:
Date: 2008-02-29
Incredible game with Endless fun and movie idea's.
The Movies is a fun and interesting "Sim" game. If you have ever seen a movie and said "I can do that" but never had the money or actuall means to do so the I have news for you!! NOW YOU CAN !! this game is ahead of its time and I recomend that you buy the expansion pack also. Makes for great chase scenes and EXPLOSINS!
If you dont treat your actors right with big Trailers and everything they desire then they may begin a serious downward spiral. They will eat till they are fat or drink till they pass out or even QUIT! I like the fact that you can actually make your OWN "Sim" actor. This game is HOURS of fun! Rating: 
Date: 2008-01-27
good game
I love this game when i first got it i wouldn't get off the computer i was rapidly making movies! then i got bored and left it alone for a month or two now im back in and having fun all over again like it's brand new ok now to the review first what i like about the game: I LOVE the sandbox mode pretty much because i can make a movie in a snap! then upload it to the internet and show it to my friends and family! i think i like sandbox mode best :) now why do i give it 4 stars? its because. oh wait ahem whats bad about the game: the lack of employees you can only hire employees if they appear on your studio lot you'd think a multi-million dollar studio would be able to find an extra -_- yes i did steal a joke from a review on youtube but i feel the same way and i dont really care for the "Story Mode" i thought the game was called "The Movies" not "Deal with whiney ungrateful stars" sorry for that overkill joke :D
and now im responding to other reviews: yes sometimes i to am frusterated with the fact that there is no free cam and that all the scenes are pre made but i think unless they made making your own scenes ULTRA ULTRA ULTRA simple i like the fact that the scenes are pre made well most of the time hehe but there is free cam in the expansion pack but the person that complained that there was no free cam well my point is that review was b4 the expansion pack was released. well that wraps it up but one last thing go to www . themoviesgame dot com and visit my studio: rhckids and enjoy my various movies :) goodbye Rating:
Date: 2007-12-27
Room For Improvement
I recently reinstalled The Movies after several failed attempts to 'complete' the game - and thus my review is based on a mixture of the two experiences. Essentially the Movies mixes several games/genres - tycoon series, The Sims, and Sim City - to give you the opportunity to build, manage, and operate a movie studio from the ground up. There are two modes of play - sandbox and tycoon - but I'll focus on the latter. Here are the main features/areas of play in the Movies:
Time: The game follows a chronological scheme which starts you in the 1920s and the dawn of moviemaking - in part to allow you to get accustomed to the game. As time goes on, you'll be able to create more complicated movies. Time also plays a factor in determining what's cool - both in terms of what genres of movies are popular (if it at all) and what clothes/looks your stars will want to rock. This makes the game more dynamic but the time is a bit skewed - the films are annoyingly boring and simple in the beginning and extremely stressful in later times making it much harder to manage your stars.
Staff: You are responsible for hiring and managing all staff as needed. Obviously the main staff you'll be managing are the stars themselves - from what they wear to who they're friends with to their stress levels to their addictions to their annoyance with a lack of entourage/large trailer/big salary - you've got to micromanage them as a main task in the game. Along the way you're also responsible for keeping an eye out for and hiring researchers, writers, repair personnel, janitors and extras. One of the big flaws of the game is the lack of staff - particularly when you have to assign them as entourage members of your various stars.
Design: Your studio lot is relatively big - but NOT big enough to house every set the game makes available to you over time. Customization is limited to decorating the studio lot with ornaments, particularly around the trailers of your stars, and can get really tedious. You'll pretty much build every item the game gives you and its always fun to explore a new set.
Awards/Game Goals: In the Tycoon mode you'll attend an awards ceremony every 5 years to collect various awards from "Most Prolific Star" to "Best Employer" to "Best Directing" - but really the REAL awards are the ones you as a player collect. There are about 8-9 levels of excellence you can aim for and each level comes with a set of goals. Some of the goals are very task-specific such as producing your first four-star movie or building up a 5-star celebrity (very hard to do btw). Other goals are more generic and will generally be achieved just by playing the game such as releasing 20 movies or winning 40 awards. Each time you complete a set of goals you'll be given an unlockable reward such as a new set or a better scriptwriting facility. The toughest set of goals is probably the 2nd last as it has some very specific tasks.
Movie Making - Of course this is a big part of the game, but only if you want it to be. The game lets you kind of run on autopilot by having scriptwriters create your scripts and simply releasing them, but you can also get in-depth into movie making by selecting the scenes, action, sets, costumes, effects and other post-production effects once the film is done. The filmmaking isn't extremely deep though - you basically choose a set, then choose a pre-mapped interaction for that scene, and alter it as you see fit according to some pre-set options (ex: an actor's expression can be changed from angry to sad to happy depending on what the scene calls for). Although its fun to make a (relatively) sensical movie, the game also lets you get away with jumbling a bunch of scenes together as well.
Overall this is a really fun, but quite challenging game, simply owing to the depth of play. Also be warned, it can be taxing on your computer, particularly if you have a weak graphics card. I liked that the game allows you to choose what you want to focus on to a degree, even within the tycoon mode. You can ignore some of the features it includes and take advantage of others that you're more interested in, which is nice. My advice is to do a practice run, maybe even in sandbox mode, and to look up some of the free online tips and guides out there - they really helped improve my gameplay this time around to the point where I'm on the last level of play before completing the game! |
