What's new in update 4 for Movie Business 2

The posts from the Director’s Cut series, describing the emergence of the Movie Business from the backstage, usually arise on the occasion of the appearance of the annual edition of the game. Until now, I have not written them on the occasion of updates, which mostly contained only bug fixes and minor improvements. This time, however, I made an exception, because the next update contains some new features about which I would like to write you a few words.

Hiring a scriptwriter to improve the script

Motivation

From time to time, among the ideas that fans of the game suggest is the possibility of hiring an external writer. Until now, I didn't want to introduce this function in order not to simplify the game too much. In my vision of the game, the player should focus on creating the best scenarios, and not count on the game algorithms to create it. After all, I decided to add such an option. However, it will only be available as an opportunity to improve the scenario.

Implementation

Some time ago the possibility of corrections to the player's scenarios was introduced. There have been three variants of such patches so far:

•      an attempt to increase its level (by automatically changing its properties such as humor, violence, sex)
•      replacement of all roles of animated characters by real people
•      replacement of all roles not actors (celebrities, politicians, etc ..)

From the new update there will be an additional option to hire an external screenwriter. What will the work on corrections of this scenario look like? And exactly like the "young screenwriter" event. The player will receive a list of items that he would like to change in the scenario. When he chooses a particular type of change, the scriptwriter begins his work and after some time reports to the player with the results. Then the whole operation can be repeated ... until successful.

An improvement of this type will be more expensive than other types of improvements. The duration of such modifications will also be longer and non-deterministic.

Notes and comments

Although it would be logical that an external scriptwriter would not take up a "slot" for us to create new scenarios, this type of improvment would also take up our resources. (If you do not have your own studies, you will not be able to create or improve another scenario at the same time).

The main reason is the current algorithm for counting scenarios during production. Changing it would require solid remodeling of the algorithm and many places of its use.

On the other hand, this option would give the player a lot easier ... so for now it will stay that way.

Alternative events from movies

Motivation

Alternative film events are an element that already existed in previous versions of the Movie Business. These are fictitious events that took place at specific times of various films. You could see them as rumors. Until now, however, they were only available in Polish (even in the English version of the game). This time they will be available to English-speaking users and there will be many more of them.

Implementation

This time I decided to use the database www.themovietimeline.com which contains quite a lot of alternative events from the movies. They will appear in their respective time segments and with the title of the film and possibly an episode (if they come from the series).

Notes and comments

This type of event will be over 20 times more than in previous versions of the game (over 7000 in total). I would like to thank Michał Wójtowicz for his help in translation into Polish and for giving me a hint which significantly accelerated the process of automatic translation.

Of curiosities in addition to the so-called general events may they relate to a specific movie series. So I added interesting facts about the game and the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series which I am a huge fan of.

If you are a fan of some movie / series and would like to prepare an alternative event from this production. Then let me know.

Charts and statistics about films

Motivation

Doszły mnie słuchy, że niektórzy gracza uwielbiają statystki i wykresy. Stąd skoro opanowałem już podstawy używania wykresów przy okazji Analityki filmów postanowiłem wykorzystać te umiejętności w innym miejscu.

Implementation

An additional Charts tab will appear in the About Films menu. It will contain a dozen or so statistics on movies filtered by the player according to specific criteria.

Because one picture says more than a thousand words, look at the picture below.

Notes and comments

If you see the need for any additional charts, please also send me such comments, we will see what can be done with it ...

Changes in Casting

Motivation

Some have complained that the casting option is not varied enough. (The same creators often appear). This is not entirely true, because a lot depends on your choices (e.g. on the type of character in the script) and the filters you use (e.g. just change the age range of the creator for other characters to appear there). I decided to add a small change affecting a greater variety of casting effects.

Implementation

Well, since the next update, every time you use the casting you will receive an additional question. It applies to whether you want to include in the casting results people who want to negotiate their salary (such people are highlighted in yellow).

Until now, the casting did not include such people for the simple reason that often such choices are not optimal in terms of cost / quality ratio.

Notes and comments

At the beginning you will probably use the default option (without negotiation) because the salary of creators who want to negotiate are usually very high. However, this will change over time and you will get more varied results.

Remember that the price of creators highlighted in yellow is the price after negotiations. (So you can't influence it directly). The reason for this is very prosaic. If the player did not know what the final price of a given creator is, he would be very irritated when he receives a negotiation message each time he chooses a creator for his film and it turns out that he simply cannot afford it.

New look for detailed movie information

Motivation

I decided to experiment a little with the appearance of the General tab in the detailed information about the movies to fit more photos there (also supporting actors).

Implementation

Now this tab will look like this.

 Notes and comments

For a moment I was wondering if a similar arrangement should also be introduced at the time of release. However, after longer experiments, it turned out that because the photos in the database are not somehow normalized, when you put several different-looking (cropped) photographs next to each other, it does not necessarily look aesthetically (a lot of visual chaos is created). Hence the decision to stay with the current look. In addition, for so many years it has become a certain trademark of the game so I would not want to change it drastically.

Intensification of advertising

Motivation

Among the ideas you told me, there is often the question of trailers. Well, you would like to be able to create and release trailers for your films. Generally, I am not a fan of too large micro management, so until now, directly, the trailers were hidden under the option of a marketing campaign. The simple assumption was that if the player chooses TV or TV Sat during the campaign, then such a trailer for the film will be created. However, one thing about the advertising that was missing was the fact that just before the movie's premiere, marketing activities are booming. I decided to combine these two requirements and create what I called the intensification of advertising ...

Implementation

What will this intensification be? Well, just before the premiere, the player will be able to strengthen his advertising. This can be by launching a trailer, radio advertising, creating an article about the production for the press, or displaying posters in the city. What's more, this form of advertising will be able to focus on one of four aspects of production:

•      heroes
•      history
•      climate
•      or special effects.

Of course, some media highlight the specific aspect better. For example, if you focus on special effects then the trailer is the most effective form of advertising.

Importantly, the available types of this intensification and its intensity will depend on your current marketing strategy. Depending on its settings (budget and funds allocated for a given advertising medium), the player will have access to the appropriate type of intensification.

This adds extra depth to your marketing efforts. Until now (as I guess) you usually set up the campaign at the very beginning of production. Now it may be desirable to change it just before the premiere to shoot into the right type of advertising in which we want to invest in the final stage of the promotion of the film.

What does the player gain? Well, the intensification of advertising allows you to get additional hype. And the intensity of this advertisement depends on the funds allocated to them. In gossip, of course, you will receive information about viewers' reactions to your actions. So how did the trailer like it and how did it affect the production hype. (Whether the trailer liked it depends on whether the aspect of the film came out well or poorly).

You may be wondering why this is so complicated. Well, it seems to me that adding the usual "add trailer" option is too trivial and does not bring any additional depth to the game. Players would mechanically release trailers that would automatically increase movie interest. If you use the intensification of advertising, you need to think a little and experiment ...

Creators' set update

The set in version 61 was also a major update, especially in the area of cult characters. Łukasz Oleksiak (in the game known as CremoN) added several hundred new cult characters and supplemented the missing photos of the creators you added who did not pass the approval because of the poor quality of the photos. Thank you so much for help!

Cult Movies

There are also several hundred new cult films in the game ... this time they are classics of cinema B (in the world of Movie Business it's even more Z;).

Algorithm changes

In the update, I try not to significantly change the algorithms of movie ratings / profits so as not to disturb player statistics on MovieStats. However, this time I made an exception that concerns the profits of the most expensive blockbusters. Well, there have been opinions that the most expensive blockbusters do not get profits in the game as much as players wanted. Making a movie for over 500 million usually ends in financial failure. And this effect is partly intended for the following reasons.

1. Personally, I'm not a fan of blockbusters where the fact of earning huge money by them is inversely proportional to their artistic quality. And I'm sorry to hear that a movie like Blade Runner 2049 has barely paid off while the next Avengers and Star Wars earn billions just because of their brand.
2. The second more practical reason is that if a single movie would earn over a billion the player would not have much to do with the cash earned, so the game would become boring for him.
3. Personally, I wanted the game to have some educational qualities, hence I would prefer players to bet on more creative productions than to produce subsequent sequels, prequels, spin-offs and other remakes.
4. The intention of the Movie Business is an economic game, hence the optimization of film production costs should be one of the challenges faced by the player. (And not employing the most expensive creators with the assumption that such a film will only bring a multitude of profits).

Despite the above reasons, I decided to make it easier for the most expensive films to return them. In practice, this will probably mean that super expensive movies will have ... slightly lower losses 😉

Bigger, better, more badness

Each edition of the game tries to expand existing elements in addition to the creators, cult characters or iconic movies added:

•      over 150 new texts in reviews
•      some new questions that will appear at press conferences and interviews

As in the update, I have also corrected a lot of small (sometimes not very prominent) bugs. Some of them were indeed difficult to track down and have been in the game for a long time.

Summary

These are the most important changes introduced in Update 4 to the 2020 Edition. Of course there are many smaller improvements regarding the interface, algorithms and game balance. I hope that they will meet their assumptions and expectations of players without introducing too many new bugs ;).

As usual, after the premiere I am waiting for all comments, suggestions and comments.

More about the game

• • Official page - moviebusiness.tomiga.net
    
• • New official forum
  • Online player stats (including Box Office) – moviestats.tomiga.net
  • Fan page a Facebooku
  • Detailed Help

P.S. If you want to read about the change introduced in previous versions of the game, I recommend the following texts published on Tomiga Blog

• Cult movies in the Movie Business or about movie data on IMDB – How are the cult films made in the Film Business or information on what can be extracted from IMDB and how it was used in the game.

Other texts related to the game and published on my personal blog Tomiga Blog are tagged with: Movie Business. Links to them can also be found in the Director’s cut section of the official game page.