The Movies Hands-On

By this point it was clear that The Movies is primarily a management simulation. Throughout most of the game it felt a lot like watching The Sims in action. There's an endless number of matters to take care of and most of them require a lot of time and are more suited for those of you who prefer to entangle yourselves in strategic management. Thankfully, there's always an opportunity to tone down micromanaging and automate certain actions if the whole thing's too much for you to handle.

Are you sure this is the right door?

I hear Tarantino is available.

Peter M. also pointed out that the entire development team spent a lot of time researching the history of film making to make each era as convincing as possible. This was self-evident in the demo. For example, discoveries in movie technology can be made by the player, or they may simply occur in due course throughout the game -- roughly about the same time they did in actual history.

The developers also highlighted several times that The Movies will feature elaborate community support, allowing gamers to create movies and then upload them on an awards website which will be launched upon the game's release. This feature will clearly motivate players to compete against each other on the "battlefields" of film making. The only thing we regret is that gamers are probably going to be restricted to making movies based on default screenplays. Granted, it would be virtually impossible to make a game based on any wacky idea that comes into ones mind. Still, it would be awesome if they could elaborate a bit on the variety of scripts and genres that are on offer.

We were told that the game is scheduled for a release in Q4 2004. All things considered, there are still many features in The Movies that remain under wraps. Well, we're dying to find out what they are. According to Peter, we haven't seen the half of what they have in store. Both he and his team seemed extremely enthusiastic about the whole project. And if I can get to make my movie where the entire Earth gets invaded by randy alien blonde women who threaten to destroy the world unless they find the perfect example of manliness (humbly portrayed by Ure Paul), then I'll be a happy camper.