The Movies is a Sims-like game where you start a new movie studio and produce films. You have to build sets, write scripts, manage actors, and more. I've never played anything like this strategy game before or since.
The Movies is a PC game in which you run a movie studio starting back in the early 1900’s and working up to present day. It plays sort of like The Sims, but it much more fun and has just as many options. Fans of strategy simulators will surely enjoy this game, as well as movie fans who may have dreamed about how they’d run the show. This is the type of game that will keep you busy for many hours and has a high replay value.
The game starts out on a big open lot where you have a little bit of money and a few people waiting outside for jobs. You first need to construct a few buildings, such as a main office for the studio, and of course a movie set. You then hire some actors, a director, writers, and so on. Each person has a big part to play in the way the studio works, and you can train them as time goes on. If you become successful, you’ll have more money to build bigger sets and produce more films. Your job is to run a profitable studio, create lots of hit films, and even win some major awards. How you perform this job is what the game is all about, as you have to manage every aspect of the studio from the image of your biggest stars all the way down to the janitorial staff.
Managing your actors can be a lot of fun, but also a little bothersome. Like real life actors, some of them can turn into divas and require a lot of extra attention. The main thing you need to do at the beginning is to train them well and get them set in certain genres. If you think about Hollywood and the way many actors work, a large number of the more popular ones have certain genres that they fit into better than others. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger and action movies. Sometimes they try to branch off into comedies and you get stuff like Jingle All the Way. In this game, you can train your actors to be popular in more than one genre, but you have to be careful not to spread their skills too thin or you’ll get an actor or actress who can’t carry a movie so well, though they do work better for supporting roles. On top of that, actors get cranky if they don’t get to play the lead once in a while. It’s kind of complicated, but not hard to figure out how things work as you play the game.