Hollywood Animal

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

basically its an indie studio's attempt at making their version of 2005 cult classic The Movies, but its more from the studio point of view, micromanging the talent actually making the films.

Its from the studio that made Rebel Cops/This is the police which were narrative games with XCom style combat where you played turn based matches as police trying to apprehend criminals.

there's obviously a similar narrative thing going on here, which i hate about sim games. Yes your grace really pissed me off realizing none of what i did truely mattered.

The biggest complaint especially from players which led to people saying this was "the dark souls of tycoon games" is that you're railroaded for your first couple of years and its not the "make whatever you want and have fun on an easy game" thing they expected. but if you know anything about the era or learn from trial and error its very easy to have a 50% marketshare and coast the rest of the game.

Its set in the golden age of hollywood and the game heavily demands you play into that with your movies and their themes and plots. The game fully embraces the Hollywood Babylon era but despite being able to sell cocaine or heroin or weird porn or stage kidnappings or drownings or kill people there's very little narrative reason to do so, and the consequences are steep.

In general it really is what you expect from a studio's first attempt at this type of game. there are tons of "things" you can do, but none of them have much effect. Another selling point they hype up which was clearly a lie is that the rival studios are AI who are also playing to win and can sabotage you or try and steal your stars out from under you.

Its rather telling how despite constant talk about the other studios there isn't a tab where you can see their release dates or if what they're selling is similar to what you're giving the public, beyond that you don't have a hint of their finances are how/why they'd be against certain things.

Another pet peeve is that its obvious that despite telling the player that theater count matters, it doesn't, its the same progression whether you have 2k screens or 32k screens, with there being very little reason to extend a window most of the time.

the game is basically a great demo. the animations and posters look great your first 3 hours, after that they get annoying and the game itself feels like its breaking at multiple points. The tech tree is openly unfinished and most of it is the opposite of useful at this stage, you're better off not investing time or money in multiple areas, the court system and spying stuff is fucking useless, on par with how the blackmail system rarely works.

stuff like being able to create your own screenplays is a waste of time and effort when there are set themes that connect well with audiences and you're not going to be able to sell certain themes no matter how much you try, and its easier to just buy a screenplay that is a guaranteed hit, the only good part is being able to farm reputation points, but at a certain point no matter what you show people its guaranteed to make money.

there are an obnoxious amount of bugs and its annoying to try and get anything done because of it. QoL features that should be there are not and i know for a fact a year from now this game will still be terrible. they've been working at it for over 2 years which is crazy for such a small game, and its still only 1/3rd done.

rewatching the trailers its not like they misled people, everything is right there. its just that none of it is fun. when you're juggling 12 films with a crew of 100 its a pain signing so many contracts and watching the same animations play out for so many people all the time. they said they're going from 1929 to 2029 but this has massive flop written all over it, it needs to be heavily streamlined or something,

a lot of the "features" are fucking useless if not a massive hindrance to playing. stuff like research is either a scam or something that should be included from the start and you're fucked if you didn't research it at a certain point. While i do like that they genuinely tried to stick with that era, no matter how badly it has hurt their game's reputation, knowing how things played out means you have a massive lead and can avoid tons of problems and turn a supposed "dark souls" game into a walk in the park

 

[Anonitolia]

I've been following this game away from any consensus on it and I'm really confused by the reputation. "The Dark Souls of tycoon games?" Who's saying this shit? Twelve year olds who've never played a game in either genre?

Anyways, that aside, I'm waiting until this thing is out of early access before giving any judgement. I know that, given the development pace, it'll probably be another 2 years minimum before that happens, but the theme is very intriguing and I really like the visuals.

I've been cautious despite that just because the rest of the studio's games seem mediocre to downright bad, with a lot of reviews heavily criticizing the gameplay of their other stuff. I didn't have very high hopes for this one, just a sort of cautious optimism.

I do hope they greatly improve the base game in Early Access, even if I'm not expecting it. The idea is too good to waste like this, and it's already been 20 years since The Movies. It could do with some decent competition.

 

[Tablet County]

I do hope they greatly improve the base game in Early Access, even if I'm not expecting it. The idea is too good to waste like this, and it's already been 20 years since The Movies. It could do with some decent competition.

I'm sure it'll make for some decently entertaining Jerma streams regardless.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

but the theme is very intriguing and I really like the visuals.

same, if you want some complete games check out "this is the police" or "rebel cops" its the same visuals only instead of golden age hollywood its the 1980s/1990s and its cops.

and I'm really confused by the reputation.

its because of how little handholding there is, like you could easily make a screenplay, have it take months only for it to get a 0.1 out of 10 and have that happen multiple times because the themes don't match. like you can't do a fish out of water thing where a knight is in a modern city, or a witch in the wild west. You genuinely have to pay attention to the era it's set in and what that audience enjoys meaning way more romance than most of the people buying this game would think to include.

beyond that stuff like marketing and figuring out who your film appeals to would be difficult if you actually pick and chose instead of just flooding fucking everything every time.

plus stuff like happiness and the fact that forcing the crew to work 100 hours a week pisses them off and it hurts the film genuinely isn't something most people realize at first.

The fact you can pay off everyone with gifts Is another thing they don't tell you until much further in.

So you're very likely to go bankrupt at least a couple times until you know how all these mechanics work.

Another huge one is the high salaries for all your starting crew. Usually in games your starting crew is either your best or so weak that you drop them after you learn the fundamentals. With this game neither is true. Theyre 10x the cost of any other crew and especially for department heads there is not a single fucking difference, between the starting crew and replacements outside of possibly missing out on storylines or events. Which because of this game means something negative happening to the studio..

Another fun one is how you can literally fire and rehire crew at a lower value almost every time. It's insane.

Another fun bit is how you can replace your entire staff with Asians and nothing happens, illegals are a different category altogether but even the racists will work with you

Another big issue i have is the film guild and how you can spend points to pass laws but at no point can you tell if its fucking over your competitors when you institute stuff like higher minimum wage or limiting hours or limiting advertising or movie budgets or cast salaries. For all i know i just made the game harder on myself because its not like you're seeing the reaction of any of the other studio heads in the game.

They really should have almost a group chat style system where you can tell what's going on with the other studios because it seems nothing you do fucks with them

Like it would be cool if you could know of an actor is the lead in a major film for a studio then kill them or something like that.

 

[Knud Lavard]

the game is basically a great demo.

I agree with this, and most of the other things you've said. I strongly suspect that the only reason they've released it at this point is because they needed a cash infusion to keep the lights on.
As it stands, the game is a big opaque box with a lot of levers to pull, buttons to press, and strings to tug at. And that's fun - but a lot of the fun is lost when you find out that some of the buttons don't do all they say, some of the strings aren't connected to anything, and that the machine breaks if you don't pull specific levers at set points. It's like you said;

there are tons of "things" you can do, but none of them have much effect

You can "do" research, but technologies are either central mechanics you lose without (marketing, for example), or slow incremental improvements that you can never lose again. Getting gradually more complex stories and gradually better sets by pressing two button a few times over the course of 25 years isn't riveting management gameplay, and expanding the timeline either means having the current amount of techs and up-adjusting the time it takes to research them (not fun) or adding more intermediate techs (also not fun). Since the game is all about managing people, it would make more sense for these things to be tied to them instead of the studio - the ability to write complex stories should be decided by the screenwriters, and your ability to make complex sets, props, and costumes should be tied to your general staff.
As it stands, a 3-star screenwriter towards the end of the game is as capable as a 7-star screenwriter would be in the beginning of the game, simply because the former has twice the amount of story elements to combine compared to the latter. And once you have the ability to make quality sets, you can get the cheapest department head and replace your employees with the cheapest labour available overnight without any consequences. I think having these abilities being tied to good management, and more importantly the ability to lose them if you mess up, is a lot more interesting managerial gameplay than the research gameplay of "press these buttons when they pop up to gradually get better at no cost or risk, but make sure to press this button first or you'll lose the game".

In general, cultivating and managing the studio is really lacking - the idea that you'd want to cultivate in-house talent makes sense from a real-world and gameplay perspective, but you're not allowed to do so, or rewarded for it. Almost all characters are at- or right below their skill potential. I looked at the save I had made right before the game ended, and in which I had the omniscient ability to know the skill ceilling of everyone working in Hollywood. Using male actors as a representative slice, of the 174 characters above 1 stars, there were the following:

	#	%
No potential	66	37,9
0-1 potential	103	59,2
1-2 potential	3	1,7
2-3 potential	1	0,6
3-4 potential	1	0,6

So 5/174 people are able to improve their craft, even if it's to a small degree. The problem is, when I looked at those people, I recognized two of them - as they were actors you had signed at the start of the game. Having as much potential as your starting characters is so exceedingly rare that I only experienced it with one other character, a 19-year old actor with 1,7/8 stars. I could easily have hired an established actor and paid less than it cost to shape this guy into a great actor, but this felt like fun emergent gameplay. I sign a long contract for next to nothing, spend a fortune getting him to 7,7/8 at 21, have him be the breakout star in two movies before he runs off and dies in the war - and that was really fun! But also frustrating, since it shows that the game is capable of making fun moments like this, but largely fails to do so. Aside from the ability to instantly know the skill ceiling of everyone working in Hollywood, another ability you could get was a free 'promising young talent' two times a year. But this, again, is the wrong direction for the game to take, I feel. I don't want to click a button and magically know the potential of everyone for free and forever without doing anything, or click a button and magically get promising young talent for free and forever without doing anything.

The social commentary present in games from this studio is as present- and confused as ever. It makes Jews Übermenschen who outperform everyone else for a fraction of the price, so you're heavily incentivised to stuff your studio full of them. There's also no penalty for having 100% of your general staff belong to the "Others" group, as the game calls it, or any other for that matter. Which does become a bit awkward when your 100% Jewish studio starts engaging in child sex trafficking to more effectively pump out morality-degrading movies.

I wrote the following about it 1½ years ago, in a discussion about This is the Police

I'll give the game a once-over when it releases, but sadly I expect it to be another game with good ideas but poor execution.

Which I think is mostly accurate. Maybe the money injection they've received from the release and the criticisms will help tighten things up, but I'm afraid some of the more fundamental flaws and errors will be harder to rework now that the game has been put to market.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

. I strongly suspect that the only reason they've released it at this point is because they needed a cash infusion to keep the lights on.

from the numbers they made a million off of putting it out right now, i doubt they'll sell more copies until next year considering how fucking bad the reviews are, i wouldn't buy something that says "mixed" as a review score, especially now when its still in Early access.

and replace your employees with the cheapest labour available overnight without any consequences

i genuinely don't think there is a single consequence for having your entire staff be asian or other. its schmuck bait to make them illegals.

As it stands, a 3-star screenwriter towards the end of the game is as capable as a 7-star screenwriter would be in the beginning of the game, simply because the former has twice the amount of story elements to combine compared to the latter

except i don't think thats true, some story elements jive well and some don't and you know for a fact their coding won't change audience preferences between runs too much so once you know which story elements work vs the ones that are just ok with each other it will be a guaranteed hit every time.

i know for a fact it will be too much hassle for them to add story elements that will change the formulas too much so chances are the wikia for this game will save all the guess work too.


the scripts themselves don't matter too, too much in terms of box office or ratings because the actors and sets and post production will up the scores.

makes Jews Übermenschen who outperform everyone else for a fraction of the price, so you're heavily incentivised to stuff your studio full of them.

my problem (mostly because once i got a monopoly on theaters i gave up reading too much) is that i genuinely couldn't find who was jewish and who wasn't. And while i could take a guess that it was tied to the names, the consequences of pissing off the nazis was too small to give a shit.

thats the other bit, outside of the police allowing no raids, most of these characters you can deal with are fucking a worthless waste of time. their inital quests are great because they give you some top tier screenplay but outside of that very little reason to keep them around, like you know the nazis will fuck off once the "war arc" ends.

I wrote the following about it 1½ years ago, in a discussion about This is the Police

the sequel TITP 2 and Rebel Cops sort of actually solve your problems, but mainly by railroading you. you don't have to play as a corrupt cop in TITP2, they shy away from that angle almost entirely.

 

[Knud Lavard]

from the numbers they made a million off of putting it out right now, i doubt they'll sell more copies until next year considering how fucking bad the reviews are, (...)

It's bound to have been a calculated move, time will tell if it works out though. Cashing in pre-emptively and doing damage control has worked out alright for other titles (No Man's Sky, etc.), but those are the exception and not the rule. Maybe they just miscalculated how much criticism there'd be?

except i don't think thats true, some story elements jive well and some don't and you know for a fact their coding won't change audience preferences between runs too much so once you know which story elements work vs the ones that are just ok with each other it will be a guaranteed hit every time.

My point was more that having 5 story elements available per script in the beginning, and a limited pool of story elements, versus 10 story elements available per script towards the end, and a large pool of story elements, means that you have a lot more elements that can 'jive well', and that it's exponential. If you're writing an action Western at the beginning, you could have a cowboy protagonist, a bandit antagonist, bank robbery, shootout, and a protagonist dies ending. These all interact, and amplify one another. But later on, you're free to throw in stagecoach robbery, train job, prison break, and a sheriff side character. And since you now have 10 elements interacting with- and amplifying one another instead of 5, it's my understanding that this lets you write better stories with worse writers. I could be wrong though.

(...), outside of the police allowing no raids, most of these characters you can deal with are fucking a worthless waste of time. their inital quests are great because they give you some top tier screenplay but outside of that very little reason to keep them around, like you know the nazis will fuck off once the "war arc" ends.

Yeah, the risk/reward isn't really there - either you're best fwiends with someone and get access to situational abilities at the cost of sometimes taking a small hit to something, or you snub them and... simply never interact with them again. I tried basically snubbing everyone, and the consequences were either temporary (mayor) or simply not there (lawyer guy, mafia Jr., bootlegger, KKK). The mafia heir approached me and said "one of your actors beat up my daughter", I told him to fuck off - and I never should have done that, because I never saw the actor again! Well, not because the mob disappeared him, but rather because I assigned him a bodyguard which 'spooked' him, causing him to become permanently unavailable.

And yeah, the Nazis weren't very well-executed. Send them a nobody that hasn't starred in any movies for a bit, and rake in a gajillion dollars in return for a movie that's chuck-full of things the Nazis weren't keen to show on screen. It does tease foreign distribution, which I feel is something art-focused movies (provided it's possible to make them, seeing as the broad appeal/artistic appeal values are pretty much in lockstep) should be able to benefit from. That'd even have the emergent story-telling of the foreign market obviously being much smaller during WW2, so you might have to either let some good talent go or shift to more mass-appeal movies. If they really wanted to throw a curveball, they'd have used a Leni Riefenstahl-inspired figure instead of the generic German actress. It would have been interesting to have a female director/cinematographer available, which would of course lead to your red-white-and-blue crew rejecting such Nazi wokeness.

the sequel TITP 2 and Rebel Cops sort of actually solve your problems

TITP 2 was much more solid in terms of gameplay and mechanics, but the setting and story was a big letdown for me. 'Disgraced former big-shot dealing with Podunkville' could have worked, but I didn't feel disgraced since I only ever did the absolute minimum of bad stuff I was forced to on pain of death, and the sleepy little town still had a murder rate resembling a bad neighbourhood in New York.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

TITP 2 was much more solid in terms of gameplay and mechanics, but the setting and story was a big letdown for me. 'Disgraced former big-shot dealing with Podunkville' could have worked, but I didn't feel disgraced since I only ever did the absolute minimum of bad stuff I was forced to on pain of death, and the sleepy little town still had a murder rate resembling a bad neighbourhood in New York.

i agree, i would have loved a more lowkey game, thousands of dumb calls instead of nightly shoot outs and events where if you pick the wrong cop or a cop that isn't loaded out they fucking die.

i really love your idea of tying quality to people, sort of like moves in a pokemon game, as we've seen with streaming shows it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a fucking thing if the person in charge sucks at their job.

I have wished for awhile for a marco management game, where you're only resonsible for hiring the people and you're fucked if they can't do their job well. like a store manager for a fast food place has so little they really can change outside of handling the employees, its basically the only thing they "manage"

and amplifying one another instead of 5, it's my understanding that this lets you write better stories with worse writers. I could be wrong though.

that actually makes sense especially from my playthrough where i just farmed points by forcing low level writers to make random screenplays and they mostly ended up being ranked low.

it would also incentivize having more story elements vs having the usual 5