A Hollywood Mogul Alternative.

[KeyserSoze]

I think that this is a "must" game. And I think that it's a game that Adam can develop smoothly.

I'm not usually this "hard" giving my opinions, but I think that is something to consider.

This are "similar" industries. They are characters with diferent "works" who had to interact to achieve a good "show". There are negotiations with different levels of compensations. I see a lot of synergies in a lot of levels.

I believe the core of TEW is a very good starting point to develop this kind of game. And I believe that the market is here, because I think 80% of the guys who want to develop a "A+" Wrestlemania will be mad to develop a "Star Wars VII: The attack of the sad gummy bears" (yeah, me included).

Please, give this a second thought.

Thanks.

[Kobe1724]

I always wondered why Adam didn't do this.

[Imarevenant]

I think that this is a "must" game. And I think that it's a game that Adam can develop smoothly.

I'm not usually this "hard" giving my opinions, but I think that is something to consider.

This are "similar" industries. They are characters with diferent "works" who had to interact to achieve a good "show". There are negotiations with different levels of compensations. I see a lot of synergies in a lot of levels.

I believe the core of TEW is a very good starting point to develop this kind of game. And I believe that the market is here, because I think 80% of the guys who want to develop a "A+" Wrestlemania will be mad to develop a "Star Wars VII: The attack of the sad gummy bears" (yeah, me included).

Please, give this a second thought.

Thanks.

Gummy Bears are not sad, they bounce here and there and everywhere. How could you be sad when doing that? :p

Back to the topic, would love an alternative to Hollywood Mogul. Well it's a decent game, there is just something missing and I never run with it too long.

[Self]

Damn this topic. I only noticed it a few days ago, but it got my really psyched to replay that Hollywood Mogul game. For two days I've been giddy as a schoolgirl, creating wacky movies based on ideas in my head and old TV shows (21 Jump Street Yo!) and now I'm back to being bored of it. I've pretty much wasted the last few days... and now I'm sad.

I think a Hollywood game could work pretty well using a similar system to TEW. You could scene-by-scene 'book' movies, the same as you do events, and each scene would get a rating depending on performance and the strength of the last scene. There's a ton of intricacies there of course, but it seems doable. I don't think anyone would want it nearly as financially complex as HM seems to be. Just make a movie, cast it, 'watch' it, get a rating, profit, next!

GDS tends to specialise is Sports/Fictional Sports based games though.

[Tempest Kane]

Started playing Hollywood Mogul a few days ago after reading this thread, i just wanted to say while i enjoyed the game i feel what TEW showcase's outshadow's the efforts of Hollywood Mogul and i agree with the OP that on the surface it seems like alot of the concepts behind TEW could be adapted for a similar and in alot of respects potentialy better alternative to the franchise.

[jbergey_2005]

How would this work though? I mean the TEW segments are being graded on popularity, performance, crowd, chemistry, etc? I cant figure out how the AI would be able to seperate how well a segment fits into certain movie? The angle part of TEW is probably the area I dislike the most because it is too easy to cheat the game mechanics. I notice this a lot of time when I download other peoples angles. People wont match the angle with its actual purpose. For example a promo based on overness or looks instead of what it really is Microphone.

[Self]

I agree to an extent. It would be tough for a game to understand how well a story progresses through scenes. Beyond some kind of ebb-and-flow, peak-and-valley system, I expect the complexities of movie storytelling would be FAR more difficult to calculate that a wrestling show.

I think it may have to resort to what TEW does now. "How good is this segment?". It rates the characters in the scene on their actor's stats (Comic Timing, Drama, Fight Skills, Looks... whatever that scene calls for) does the whole calculating thing, and then comes out with a rating for that segment, then moves on. After it calculates all of the scenes, it gives a movie rating... which would often mean nothing financially.

My main issue with a game like is... where's the game? TEW has a very clear "Start a promotion, get bigger through better shows, develop your roster" flow to it, there's progression, a continued challenge. While HM is very much a sandbox game. I can make any movie I want, whenever I want. I can remake Ace Ventura with Leo DiCaprio if I want. Fun, perhaps. Profitable, yes. Awards, maybe. After that...I'm right back where I started. There's little sense of progression compared to the things like "I'm getting Steve Flash over!" or "Gargantuan wrestled an A match!" or "National! Whoo!"

It's not undoable, it would just need something extra, I feel, to add some immersion to it. To give you an invested interest in the world you're playing in.

I'm actually a movie guy first, wrestling guy second, so I've been thinking a lot about this.

[Sons of Kohral]

Something similar to TEW? You can start up your own movie studio, starting first with indy film makers, going through contracts and such.

I agree with you. When I played HM, it was fun for a week and then I was like, "something here is missing" and I think you nailed it on the head.

[Self]

I actually started a new HM game this morning, giving myself a couple of "Owner Goals".

1) Get Ryan Reynolds over.
2) Destroy Rene Zellwiger's career.

It's actually sort of fun. Besides my usual projects I get going, made for profit and/or giggles, I'm CONSTANTLY finding projects for Ryan Reynolds to do. Every decent Original Screenplay with a Male Lead aged 29-35, preferable with a Comedy leaning, is being bought and developed for him, and immediately sold if he's "Not Interested". As soon as he finishes shooting one film I'm casting him in another. I'm pairing him up with Big Name Directors and Co-Stars, I'm upping the SFX, I'm giving the audience as much reason as possible to watch this film regardless of Reynolds, so that it succeeds in spite of his.

It's working pretty well. From his initial $500,000 asking price, he's up to $1,050,000. He's gonna be a star!

On the flip-side, I'm buying the very worst screenplays I can find, and giving them to Zellwiger, then amping up the budget to bomb-worthy proportions. No change yet, but I want to kill her career... Not that I have anything against her, it was more a random decision.

[cappyboy]

Man, you know Self, real world modding Hollywood Mogul is something I've never been able to do very well. Not that in a movie game I'd have the inclination anyway. My knowledge of movie stars of the last 20 years tends to be scattershot at best. I'll watch the occasional flick here and there. But it seems in recent years I've fallen out of love with the medium in general. Even if a movie comes out I know I'd probably like I'm not going to go out of my way to see it. Last time I started to go to the theater to see a movie, I changed my mind just as I was about to get there and ended up walking on to my sister's house to hang out and play video games instead.

[crayon]

I can't say I've played Hollywood Mogul (although I'm tempted to after hearing this), but if anything running a movie studio or tv network seems more like WMMA than TEW. As in you sign the right people, and then pray to god that they do their jobs and deliver the goods for you. Sure, a movie studio would have a bit more input than a typical MMA promotion, but it's also a far lot less than deciding what each scene/angle of a movie would be.

When I think about playing a movie/tv sim, I prefer the idea of the behind the scenes work.. dealing with marketing, conducting test screenings, sending ocassional notes to the "creative team" (writer/directors/casting) to steer the movie one way or another which they may or may not fight me on (this is about the most involved in angles I'd want to be), spotting new trends and hot emerging talent to exploit.. all that kind of stuff. When it comes to TEW, I'm all about the angles, but this for some reason doesn't pull me the same way. (and I restate that I haven't played HM, so it may already do this, and maybe you guys are right that it does need something more to keep people from getting bored, I don't know)

However, while I'm far from knowing Adam Ryland on an intimate basis, I can't really imagine him sinking the time into this unless he already has some kind of passion for the movie industry, similar to which he appears to have (or had) for wrestling and MMA. I would like to see GDS tackle it in a sim though, given that they seem to be pretty good for quality depth, but it may require the right developer to appear, first.

[mad5226]

I think it could run great on a TEW system you have the "Overness" of the workers. You have the "chemistry" of the workers. As far as skills go instead of brawling and flying you could have drama and comedy. I think HM made by Adam Ryland would be perhaps the greatest thing ever

[SammoHung]

I think it could run great on a TEW system you have the "Overness" of the workers. You have the "chemistry" of the workers. As far as skills go instead of brawling and flying you could have drama and comedy.

And let's not forget the "gimmicks", rated for each "worker".
That same principle fits perfectly the "roles for a movie" situation.
When you are preparing the screenplay, you have to set the roles. They have requirements checked on "workers" the same way TEW gimmicks have.

That alone would add an awesome level of depth and "realism" when creating movie ideas, which is really the whole point and funniest part of HM.

In fact the original game has a pretty strange lack of "precision" and variety in the stats department. Starting from the simplest ones. For instance, when you write a movie in that game, the roles have always to be no ethnic-specific (so the computer could cast say, John C. Reilly as the lead in a Martin Luther King biopic...err! ) but have always to be absolutely precise as far as the age goes. You can't write a part for a person "in her 20s"....Nope, has to be 20, or 21, or 22......bla bla. I don't think it's how things work at all and is really bothersome and not realistic.
Again, these are just the obvious stats for a role, but there are many more important ones, such as the focus being on drama or comedy or just action, the amount of sex appeal the role works optimally at (a "common man" role might not work well with a very buff guy playing it, and obviously on the other hand there are roles that require an insanely physically gifted castmember )...and even how much "scripted" it has to be, allowing certain actors, especially comedians, to be rated for the ability to ad-lib and put their own personality in..which can go very well with certain directors or on the contrary produce a big clash with the control freak, very strict kind of directors.

Of course, the gimmicks as designed and intended are then rated for the specific worker when assigned...and that would be how good of a fit the talent is at playing the part. Plenty of room for the randomness, and time to see YOUR dream actor/actress, the one you wrote the role (if not the whole movie) for....perform horribly at the audition, forcing you to cast somebody else. Fun fun fun!

Again, the use of the gimmick system would work differently from TEW, because they are not written for a general use (an "Armed force" character works the same in any in-game federation, in TEW) but should be specified in every movie, with probably a lot of attention (and a challenge for the game designer) on how the single roles interact together and pander to different audiences in the finished product. That would probably be the most difficult part and the core of the game: it's honestly difficult for me to say how much successful the original HM game is in that, because the project is just a big sandbox and the creator of the game himself personally stated that doesn't really know how some balances and results of his own game work (!!). It might just be, and i am increasingly convinced actually, that it's SO much of the users' imagination that fills the void and makes sense of what comes from the script-writing engine.

More cosmetic and less important parts of the gameplay that come to mind are the talent relationships and personalities. Stars with all sort of drug and law problems, bad attitude, or conversely friendly, bold, shy, etc etc...that can play and integrate extremely well into a movie-showbiz world.
Actors in HM are basically all the same, not much fun at all: with the personality system used in Tew not only we can see the troublemakers messing up their talents (if they have any) with booze and drugs, but we could also tell apart the scene-chewers from the humble character actors, have quite a bit of interaction and behind the scenes gossip and chemistry notices...etc. A very much vivid scenario.
A vaste and diverse game world can be really cool too. Shooting movies in various areas can be great fun, and put interesting challenges, with certain locations being considerably cheaper than others, but also bound to make certain stars unhappy, unavalaible for major parts of the shooting, create all sort of troubles with local authorities, not look "just as good"...etc etc.
Plenty of real life examples for this!
To not make an over-complicated game, it should be assumed that every movie produced by the Player is shot in English...but still, making nationality, language skills, popularity in certain areas a part of each talent's stats could be a great feature, both for the depth of the simulation (HM has no real economy, and foreign sales are kinda random, except for the computer that uses them to avoid losing money - In HM the computer opponents can't lose money on any box-office bomb, EVER...it's written in the game guide even :cool: ) and for the sheer enjoyment of the user, who can finally produce a movie with many options and that makes kinda sense.

Negotiating contracts too ...i see real potential for the same system used in Tew and now WMMA2.


I think HM made by Adam Ryland would be perhaps the greatest thing ever

I totally quote you on this. :D

[jjohns44]

i'm a fan of Hollywood Mogul and I would have to agree with the majority of people here that a TEW-type game would blow HM out of the water. I've tried so often to play it and enjoy it but I get pretty bored of it quickly and find myself playing TEW more often. I don't think it would happen from Ryland though and the creators of HM show little to no interest in improving it. I know it's time consuming but it is pretty crappy to want to do an MLK biopic and all of the black actors show no interest whereas the white ones do. plus the awards system they have is rather half assed and predictable if you make your own film you will almost always get award nominations and win. You can make a will smith movie where he's just taking a crap on a toilet fo 2 hours and it'll make billions of dollars and win awards. The preset movies you can get don't make a whole lot of sense. How often do award bait drama films have 5 star special effects or a film where the main character is 60 and the love interest is 24. ugh

so I find myself playing in an interactive diary/blog for the game with other HMers and found it much more fun to come up with original ideas, cast them in the game and see where they go with box office.

[cappyboy]

I'll tell you something else a GDS version of Hollywood Mogul would have that would be really cool. A StudioVerse. Carey had the groundwork laid down for one in HM2 with leading man Alex Miles, action queen Rickie Segal, sultry southern belle Celeste Ashley who was great for rom-coms. Veteran talent like Bobby Anthony and Roland Osborne who rocked in mob type films and teen stars like Jeff (forget his last name) and Carley Gray who seemed to always have killer chemsitry with each other. But rather than expand this simulated Hollywood core that he had going he recreated the whole talent pool from scratch. So the character connection that would have kept me drawn in just isn't there like it was in 2. Had he kept the old crew and expanded on them, I could very well see the kind of StudioVerse/real world debate on the Hollywood Mogul boards that we have here.

[praguepride]

I think using HM3 as a starting point would be great.

First off, if you play the role of an executive producer, you don't create the movie scene by scene. The end movie could be randomly generated similar to how WMMA works with the fight.

Overall quality is based upon budget, director/producers/stars/ talent, any chemistry (between stars, between star & director), talent fit into genre, and release date.

As for the "game" there could be existing studios that are at various levels. Maybe have a "Big 3" type scenario where there are three huge companies fighting over stars and star quality scripts while the Indies are left with whatever is left over. Again it would be very similar to TEW in that smaller studios would have to try and develop stars/writers/directors/producers and hope and pray they don't get picked up by the Big 3 and taken out of your price range.

Personal relationships would come into play as well. Look at Gigili (sp?) The whole movie was rewritten to capitalize on J-Lo & Affleck's relationship. It definitly didn't work out for them, but the point is studio tried to do it.

The biggest thing that TEW could do is really give talent personalities. Look at how deep personalities are in TEW. There's history and relationships and people you love to hate, and the underdogs struggling to succeed. Right now HM3 is similar to EWR in that it's pretty much just a list of names with traits associated to it. No depth, no reason to want to "care" about a worker. That could really add depth because think about how many user-made scenarios are crafted around their favorite characters?

Finally, the replacement for matches and angles (i.e. the core of the gameplay) would be in:

A) Finding scripts. I don't like how they just list a ton of scripts and you just pick the 5-star ones to make a great movie. Secondly, scripts shouldn't just mean 5-star = the best. Not everyone likes intelligent, pretentious movies. Look at cinema today and a good way to get a successful (money wise) film is to get a simple action script and shove it full of explosions. 5-Stars in a category should come with more risks associated to it. So script selection will have to take that into account as well.

Lower intelligent scripts would be able to appeal to more audiences, but critics wouldn't give it good reviews. 5-star "intelligence' scripts might make the critics happy but alienate the majority of your audience and drop grossing numbers. Look at the movie "Titanic." At least in my oppinion it was a pretty straightforward plot without a lot of twists or "intelligence" but it appealed to the masses and made a boatload of money :D

B) Contract negotiations with stars. Sometimes you have to try and cut costs, sometimes you have to entice stars to even look at the script. I don't know if it's done now, but maybe offer a star an "exclusive contract" similar to a written deal in TEW where you agree to work solely for their studio in exchange for a minimum amount of money/roles for the year. This isn't how it's done in Hollywood today, but who cares? It's a simulation, it doesn't have to be 100% accurate to real life.

C) Backstage incidents: There's usually things that go wrong on set. Maybe equipment gets delayed (minor) or the star gets into an accident (MAJOR!).

D) Post-Production: HM3 does a fairly good job representing all the different tweaks you could use, and this could come into play. You could just go with the defaults or you could up certain things for a price.

E) Marketing: a good challenge is to make marketing cost effective. Depending on the movie genre, the target audience, and the overall industry at the time it would mean different types of marketing would be more or less effective. Just issuing teasers would improve overall movie quality (audience doesn't already know all the cool scenes and plot twists) although it reduces opening night numbers (people don't know if they want to go or not) but detailed trailers increase audience numbers, but decrease movie quality (audience already saw the best parts in the trailers.)

F) Brand management. Over general scripts could be all sorts of "brands" that could be bought and managed. Star Wars, Star Trek, Die Hard, Batman, Superman, X-Men, Aliens etc. etc. The movies where the name alone can pull people into the theatres. Management would include having to deal with prima donna stars who up their costs because they know you can't make the sequels without them, avoiding saturation by spacing out the sequels in the right order, rising fan expectations which would make continuing a brand a risky venture. On the one hand as long as the brand still has high quality and high momentum, it will put butts in seats no matter how crappy the movie is (Star Wars 1) but due to high fan expectations the overall movie quality has a higher potential to be trashed due to fans having too high of expectations. However, as long as people are still entertained or if the movie brand has high enough momentum, you can put on several bad shows and still get into the top 10 grossing films list (again, star wars is a great example of that).

[praguepride]

Does anyone know of other hollywood studio style games.

there's the obvious one: The Movies and Hollywood Mogul which was discussed already, but I thought there was another one.

I thought the guy who did Rock Manager (or Pop Star Manager or Rockmanger or whatever) was working on a hollywood style game?

Anyway, it's definitly an untapped market if there's only two games that do it. The Movies already has a solid grasp on the "making movies" part, but there isn't a lot of competition in the "running the business/developing talent" part of the industry (other then HM3 which as mentioned isn't much of competition).

[KeyserSoze]

Well. Sammo and Praguepride have done a great work giving ideas to this kind of game.

I think this kind of game could be terrific. ^^

[praguepride]

Man, the more I play hollywood mogul, the more I think about how it could be done so much better....sigh.

[Kobe1724]

I half want to see Adam do TEW 2009/10 and half want him to work on this. As far as big sells go, this and TEW are easily probably the next best game idea for him to work on. :)

[praguepride]

I think he said that he won't be doing TEW 2009. Next project is unannounced.

Most likely there will be a TEW 2010 though. I mean...it's such a big round number :D

[KeyserSoze]

I don't have any doubt. I prefer a TEM (Total Extreme Movies) than a TEW (Extreme Warfare Movie could be a name too... vintage?:D:D). TEW 2008 is a very good game, while the movie games are, at best, decent games.

If I've to bet I would said that the next game is a Wrestling Spirit or MMA Spirit game, but the more time pass the happier I get, as it points that the new game goes in a new different direction.

I've hope

[randomfreeze]

Hadn't seen this thread before, but it's made me boot my HM game back up and look through it. I haven't played it in 6-8 months, and I do like it...the game just doesn't have much replay value and is easy to manipulate but the idea of a game like this is insanely awesome. I'd easily want Adam and company to make a game involving the movie industry rather than an update to his older series. Granted, I've only bought TEW and not MMA or Spirit...but a Hollywood game would be the end all be all for me. I'm looking in one of my save game folders and Jeff Goldblum is on a 4 year Best Male Lead Oscar winning streak, haha.

Plague and Sammo put together some really good ideas, and I think getting rid of the * system for movie scripts nailed one of the reasons it's too easy in HM. From what I've heard others say about Adam here is he dislikes the * system, at least as far as TEW goes, so without that tool I think we'd be rewarded with a tougher challenged if it was put together here.

The idea of creating a -verse for this just sounds too fun. With different studio sizes/preferences towards movies/actors they hire or starting up your own production company. And then just coming up with a world full of actors...ahhh...now I'm looking forward to a game that's not even happening. :(

[shoe1985]

Hey everyone. I was actually a beta tester for Hollywood Mogul 3, closer to the end of development, so, I was not able to give a lot more feedback on the game, but I thought it turned out well. I do agree that it could use something else.

I always liked the idea of going by weeks, this way you can have a top 10, and can continue to market the movie instead of just setting it one time.

Then you could go up against other studios' big movie, and try to take the box office that week.

There are a lot of things that could be done, but it has to be done right.

There was a Mac game called Sim Cinema Deluxe that was fantastic, but still lacked in many areas.

This idea would be something I would love to see someone from this development team create. HM3 was not an easy game to make, and took a long time to develop.

[mike b]

Plus was not the the individual who created Hollywood Mogul 3 a former writer himself. So he new allot about the movie business himself.

[shoe1985]

Plus was not the the individual who created Hollywood Mogul 3 a former writer himself. So he new allot about the movie business himself.

He has down work in the movie business. I do believe he was a screenwriter for a studio, maybe Paramount? I don't remember, he discussed it at one time.

If we were to work say tomorrow in the movie industry, it would be nothing like we think it would be.


It is my opinion, my opinion, that a game like this needs a weekly format, allowing for the gamer to see how the film did opening week, and to push the movie in advertising. But, from what Carey said, it is very hard to program this.