Developer: Aniki Games
Publisher: Goblinz Studio, Maple Whispering
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
The Executive: Movie Industry Tycoon – Review
If you were around in the early 2000s, you may remember a game called The Movies. It was a simulation game that involved managing your very own movie studio and creating your own movies. We spent a good chunk of 2006’s summer evenings recreating our favorite blockbusters within the limitations of the game. While many other sim games from the same era, like Rollercoaster Tycoon, got spiritual successors, there hasn’t quite been a game like The Movies since. Enter The Executive: Movie Industry Tycoon. It doesn’t *quite* hit the same marks as The Movies did, but it comes very close in concept. Needless to say, we looked forward to returning to the virtual movie industry. Can The Executive work up some Hollywood magic or is it a box office bomb?
Story
Although The Executive isn’t a narrative-driven game, it isn’t completely devoid of a story either. The game tracks the history of a movie executive (that’s you) over the course of fifty years, between 1970 and 2020. For the most part, you’re in charge of how everything unfolds for your budding cinematic venture. That said, there are key historical events, like the introduction of home media, and random events like incidents on movie sets that flesh out the timeline. You can take the word ‘timeline’ literally too. At the end of a run, you’re presented with a neat little timeline of the milestones your office achieved… provided you don’t go bankrupt before that. We should note that the in-game movie titles are thinly veiled parodies of existing films. On top of that, the actors and directors typically swap out the letters of their first and last names, like George Lucas becoming Leorge Gucas. It’s cheesy, but we admit it did get a chuckle from us.
Graphics
While The Executive’s presentation is nice to look at, this isn’t a game that relies on being visually impressive. The gameplay is completely reliant on static menus, with the graphics being more of a background feature. You’re presented with a view of your office, where you see all of your employees hard at work, and as time passes, the lighting changes. Even then, it’s essentially a loop of character models sitting in an office, and the only real change in scenery comes from moving to a bigger location. Of course, this relatively simple presentation does mean that The Executive isn’t pushing anyone’s hardware to its limits, and the game runs very smoothly.
Sound
Like with the visuals, The Executive’s soundscape feels like more of a background feature. The music is forgettable, but we mean that in the best way possible. It’s cheerful and upbeat, creating the right atmosphere for the game’s setting of a busy office. Sound effects also match this, with phones ringing constantly and the clacking of keyboards and typewriters mimicking the setting. Of course, the game wouldn’t be complete without some Hollywood sound effects too, like triumphant fanfares and applause when awards are given out.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay, The Executive falls somewhere between a full-fledged sim game and an idle game. Your goal is to create a profitable executive office, hopefully snagging a couple of awards along the way. Although your beginnings are small, with just your CEO sitting in a modest office, you’ll eventually hire salespeople, analysts, and marketeers in order to become as successful as possible. Now, success doesn’t just equate to making lots of money. There are a lot of things to balance here, and it took us a while to really get into the flow of things. Thankfully, the game has a concise tutorial, and navigating the different menus was very intuitive. Getting a film production up and running is a simple matter of picking a genre and theme, hiring a director and lead actor, assigning a producer, and coming up with a catchy title. After that, it’s off to the movies! Once production has started, you’ll need to assign parts of your budget for pre-production and post-production. If you’re making a huge blockbuster about dinosaurs, you’re going to want to invest in special effects whereas a coming-of-age drama probably benefits more from spending more cash on writing.
Making movies in The Executive involves three core elements: money, prestige, and research. The more money you have, the more you can spend, but just throwing cash at a movie doesn’t make it good or successful. If you’re somewhat movie-minded, knowing which available elements to pick and mix is common sense. However, you’ll need to unlock them. As you release more movies, you’ll accrue research points. These can be used towards unlocking and upgrading new elements for your office, like a marketing department or being able to release your back catalog on home media. You can also use these points to unlock more production options or new themes. We’d argue that research points are perhaps The Executive’s most important element. It helps to have a clear idea of what kind of office you want to be. Our first successful run focused on financial success, and we eventually created blockbusters in the vein of The Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter. However, despite being financially successful, these films never won any awards. As an experiment, we then opted for a smaller indie studio that was less cash-focused but tried to appease critics, resulting in our first award win. Releasing critically acclaimed films builds studio prestige, which in turn gives access to a substantially better pool of actors and directors.
A playthrough of The Executive is fairly short and can be completed over the course of an afternoon or an evening. We completed our first run in roughly four hours. However, this is the kind of game that benefits from several playthroughs, as the short timeframe isn’t enough to really utilize every possibility in a single go. Fortunately, upon completing a run, you’re able to continue playing in Endless Mode. There are four difficulties available, although the main difference between them seems to be your budgetary starting conditions, and you can also choose between building a Hollywood studio or opting to work as a movie executive in China, which brings its own set of challenges. At this point, we’ve got quite a few hours of The Executive under our belt, but we feel like we’ve barely even scratched the surface. We haven’t quite mastered the game’s marketing and analytics departments, and haven’t touched the IP market, which lets you purchase pre-existing franchises from other studios and continue them. It’s a surprisingly layered game, and we can’t wait to see how sinking our teeth in the other aspects of movie-making shakes up the timelines of our future offices.
Conclusion
As far as sim games go, The Executive strikes the right balance between being accessible and having enough content to sink your teeth into. The focus is on the layered gameplay, and The Executive absolutely nails this aspect. A single playthrough may not eat up a whole lot of your time, but there are plenty of reasons to keep returning to this one and try a different approach. While the game’s audio and visuals aren’t anything special, they’re functional and help with setting the right atmosphere. The result is a game that doesn’t stand out at first glance, but if you give it a chance, you’re going to end up being pleasantly surprised.
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