Movie Studio Boss: The Sequel
About
You have just been appointed the head of a new Movie Studio and have been given 10 (now 50) years to make it the most successful studio around. You are up against seven other computer controlled Studios all trying to be the best Studio in the world. You are judged in three ways - most turnover, most profit and most awards.
As the Studio Boss you have lots of decisions to make, including: controlling the budget, deciding what type of film you are going to make, hiring a scriptwriter, getting the best director, trying to get the screenplay right, negotiating with the stars, handling problems on set, getting the post-production right and that’s all before you worry about the cinema release. You’ve got marketing costs, web publicity, test screenings, how many screens to show the film on, when to hit the International markets, when to sell it to TV, how long before you put it on DVD and much, much more!
Back in the late 90s I thought it would be fun to create a game about running a Movie Studio in the style of a soccer management game. This genre is one I know well having worked on Atari ST/Amiga games like Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager and Gazza's Super Soccer – it's hard to believe that these titles are now over 25 years old! So Movie Studio Boss was born and released around 2001 on our experimental website/shop PlaceforGames.
Jump forward to 2014 and I thought it would be fun to get back into writing games again. So what to do first? I thought it would be sensible to update some of my old titles and as Movie Studio Boss was always a favourite I thought I'd start with that one. Movie Studio Boss is certainly showing it's age – I'm pretty sure Hollywood doesn't release too many titles on video now! Plus technically it's screen resolution was fixed at 800 x 600 – which looks like a postage stamp on modern computer screens. So MSB The Sequel it is. My old artist friend Gary agreed to collaborate and Movie Studio Boss has been updated.
Besides giving me the chance to get it to run on screens which have larger resolutions there's lots of technical benefits including improved audio (players of the old game will be pleased to note that the tunes I wrote have been replaced with a great score from some new friends Guy, Tim & Bradley) and the ability to have more people on screen. In MSBTS every film has a Production Assistant who will dress in a costume relevant to the film and will walk around the Studio letting you know what stage of production the film is in.
As well as updating the gameplay – introducing Blu-ray and updating the financial model – and pretty much all the graphics I got the chance to add in new features; animated films, musicals, age rating, personnel profiles, more detailed film credits, more reports, notification icons and more.Thanks For Your Time.Edward
As the Studio Boss you have lots of decisions to make, including: controlling the budget, deciding what type of film you are going to make, hiring a scriptwriter, getting the best director, trying to get the screenplay right, negotiating with the stars, handling problems on set, getting the post-production right and that’s all before you worry about the cinema release. You’ve got marketing costs, web publicity, test screenings, how many screens to show the film on, when to hit the International markets, when to sell it to TV, how long before you put it on DVD and much, much more!
- Turn based (each turn represents a week), yet has time pressure. Players have around 10 minutes to make all their decisions each turn and can end the week early if they want.
- More than one way to win. Bosses can win by being the best at making high turnover, profitable or classic award-winning films.
- Each section of the game is designed as a ‘mini-game’ in itself.
- Success is firmly in the hands of the player. Decisions they make (and they have many to consider) always affect their box office.
- Covers pretty much the entire movie making experience.
- You are up against seven other computer-controlled players.
- We keep the numbers sensible - you do not see $1,067,345 ever in our game. Just $1M. This helps to keep the game from looking too much like a spreadsheet.
Back in the late 90s I thought it would be fun to create a game about running a Movie Studio in the style of a soccer management game. This genre is one I know well having worked on Atari ST/Amiga games like Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager and Gazza's Super Soccer – it's hard to believe that these titles are now over 25 years old! So Movie Studio Boss was born and released around 2001 on our experimental website/shop PlaceforGames.
Jump forward to 2014 and I thought it would be fun to get back into writing games again. So what to do first? I thought it would be sensible to update some of my old titles and as Movie Studio Boss was always a favourite I thought I'd start with that one. Movie Studio Boss is certainly showing it's age – I'm pretty sure Hollywood doesn't release too many titles on video now! Plus technically it's screen resolution was fixed at 800 x 600 – which looks like a postage stamp on modern computer screens. So MSB The Sequel it is. My old artist friend Gary agreed to collaborate and Movie Studio Boss has been updated.
Besides giving me the chance to get it to run on screens which have larger resolutions there's lots of technical benefits including improved audio (players of the old game will be pleased to note that the tunes I wrote have been replaced with a great score from some new friends Guy, Tim & Bradley) and the ability to have more people on screen. In MSBTS every film has a Production Assistant who will dress in a costume relevant to the film and will walk around the Studio letting you know what stage of production the film is in.
As well as updating the gameplay – introducing Blu-ray and updating the financial model – and pretty much all the graphics I got the chance to add in new features; animated films, musicals, age rating, personnel profiles, more detailed film credits, more reports, notification icons and more.Thanks For Your Time.Edward
System requirements for macOS
Minimum:
- OS: Mac OS X 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (Dual-Core) CPU Speed: 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: VRAM 512 MB
- Storage: 700 MB available space
- Additional Notes: A demo is available for you to try.
System requirements for PC
Minimum:
- OS: Windows Vista/7/8
- Processor: Intel ® Core2Duo or comparable dual core processor min. 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Dedicated DX9 graphics card (shader model 2.0) capabilities with 512 MB
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 700 MB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible sound card
- Additional Notes: A demo is available for you to try.
Movie Studio Boss: The Sequel reviews and comments
Translated by
Microsoft from French
Microsoft from French
Movie Studio boss, the game that sells dream par excellence for all moviegoers like me!
And when you're a moviegoer, you can only be disappointed in this game. Where we expect fun and management, there is no fun, and very little management.
The goal of the game is simple, create a film production box, produce movies, and try to win a maximum of cinematic rewards, while bringing money back to the production box.
In theory, the game has everything to please, but once on it, we are dissing fast enough.
It is only a succession of written interfaces in which you must first choose a title to your film project, then you have to hire a screenwriter according to the genre of the film (horror, drama, comedy etc.). Some screenwriters are more gifted on some genres.
Once the screenwriter is chosen, it is around the Director, then actors, actresses... and finally the film goes into filming, which you see absolutely nothing.
The game takes place by lap, so you will need between 10 and 90 laps to complete the filming of your film, everything depends on the duration chosen, and the imponderables of the filming (actress drunk, actress part make of the humanitarian at the other end of the world, fire on tray, unfinished décor, bad actor, script that does not work etc.).
Even when you choose actors at the top of their form, pay a fortune, they are always alcoholic, delaying filming for a week or two. (Each round represents one week).
Once the film is finished filming, it goes into post-production, you will have to choose a quality of special effects, a fitter, a sound engineer, and a musician... and we left for 10 and 30 weeks of Assembly according to the importance of the project...
Then comes the long awaited output to the cinema! And there, there is more to it, we must succeed in predicting the success of a film by choissing the number of copies distributed in the US and abroad, then after managing the sale of DVDs.
And we see that barely 10% of the films produced are profitable, and that 5% appeal to the press.
You might as well say that it is extremely difficult to make money for your production box... but that to the limit we do not care, since you can produce an unlimited number of movies, with the budget of your choice. Your production box will just be several billion dollars in deficit.
I would have liked it so much, that the concept is more advanced, with the possibility of creating even his film scenes... There you only do the role of a film producer, who stays in his Office.
Now that we've talked about how the game works, let's talk about graphics, it's frankly simplistic, pixelated when you look at the details... and clearly not worked. The game is content with the minimum in terms of graphics, but the worst is that it still asks a lot of resources!
Finally, to conclude, let's talk success. There are 17 of them, all of them are the lucky factor. Since they are linked to the box office, be to the cinematographic rewards.
They are not complicated to get, your biggest nanard, will manage to seduce the members of the Academy (failing to seduce the press), and you can hope the 100% in about ten hours. The hardest part is to understand how the game works.
Fortunately a very correct tutorial helps us to assimilate all this.
The +:-a correct tutorial-a theme rarely touched on-:-we don't have fun-a management game, but I'm still looking for it-graphics that make the minimum and ask for the resource-cinema/DVD output difficult to understand and manage-press too much of Re with 95% of the films-very repetitive-it is only a sequence of written interfaces-too many shooting accidents successes:-solo: Yes-multi: no-difficulty: normal-duration: 10 hours (according to your comprehension; chance)