The Executive – Movie Industry Tycoon Review (PC) – Blah Blah Land
I have a thing about tycoon games. They’re leisurely paced, easily digestible slices of the gaming landscape, and have certainly made a corner for themselves from even the earliest days of PC gaming. Thanks to the likes of Game Dev Tycoon, the genre shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon and with The Executive, you can now realise for big movie studio dreams right on your desktop. It’s the stuff dreams are made of, we’re going to Hollywood baby!
Except, Hollywood, it turns out, isn’t all that exciting when you’re on the office side of the velvet rope. The Executive evokes a kind of Football Manager style level of visual fidelity, where you’re going to be looking at very little but menus, spreadsheets, dialogue and a voxel-esque angle above the office where you’re spinning magic with your savvy business deals. They game isn’t called The Executive for nothing. This is most certainly not the flashier side of the film industry. Your office naturally expands over time as you employ more staff and starting building much bigger offices, but it’s still mostly a single room you’re looking at. Still, you should be too busy making important movie decisions to even notice the visuals. It’s just some people at a desk, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting really.
No, this is where the decisions are made. We need a title, a genre, a subgenre, a budget – how much of the budget goes on what? We’re making a wartime romantic drama so let’s throw everything at costume and design and minimise the visual effects -, who is starring in it? Who is directing it? Who is so hot right now and which up and coming director needs a big break? Do they respond to the script? Is it in their wheelhouse to make a gangster horror musical that you’ve envisioned called East Side West Side Story (yes, this was one of my movies)? What about the certificate rating? Oh wait, now we need to decide who we’re going to pair up with for home distribution. One company for our entire back catalogue? Very well, oh here comes the nominations for the Gaspars (this games’ Oscars), are we up for best picture for a heavy sci-fi drama Tindernova (yes, I made that one too)? We are! Awesome. Did we win? Ah, not this time. Very well! We move until we do. Right then, time for the box office returns. Oh, looks good! Stay in the green! Brilliant, we’ve made our budget back and we can greenlight a sequel. Now to do this all over again. Several times over.
And that’s The Executive. Any questions? Well yeah, probably a few. Right then. From the back!
Here’s the thing about The Executive – you gotta really want it. If you’re kicking off Finger Guns Films you want to be making some instant impacts, and with what you have to work with (cheap actors, directors and budgets despite having a fairly decent amount of money to kick off), you have to make some decisions fairly quickly to decide which route of movies you want to be making. Are you going to go for audience pleasing blockbusters or award bait like my indie darling Puppet Girl (probably starring Soarsie Ronan if it was real)? You’re not going to be hitting homeruns right off the bat, fortunately that’s where the games best mechanic comes into play.
The ‘Research’ menu is where the big decisions are, well, decided. After a little bit earning and some star power flying around, you’ll accrue enough research points to unlock additional benefits for your movie making such as supporting characters, new genres and themes, distribution options that are more suited to your films genre and hopeful audience, knowledge on sound effects, foley, using copyrighted music on your soundtracks, hiring publicists, PR folks who you can task with finding out what trends audiences are currently chasing and much much more.
I found myself counting down until I could unlock additional attributes for my movies and studio, as if you have a bit of a rough time of it early on (I certainly did), they may take a little while to become available to you. You are a one man band at the very beginning so hiring others as soon as you possibly can is essential, that way you can task them to do the menial stuff (like production and home distribution) whilst you focus on the super fun creative aspects. Consider them AI, the menial boring stuff is exactly what it should be doing.
Naturally, if you get everything spot on, the movie is going to make millions and once all the cuts have been made to various distributors and to the home market, you’re left with a sizeable amount to work with. Research will allow you to unlock sequel and franchise options, so if you want to keep a particular ball rolling you’re going to have to work for it but the rewards are tenfold. It’s a super fun aspect of the game where I just kept chasing research points and unlocking more exciting themes and gaining knowledge in certain production based jobs I wouldn’t have known otherwise. The more you know the better you can execute them as you make your picture, and the final product will be all the better for it.
It’s a huge buzz the first time you make something that not only does well, but goes absolutely gangbusters. You feel like you’ve finally cracked the code and as the serotonin is rushing through your body you get to work on a sequel only to find out the audiences no longer want films in that genre. Instead they’re all about the exact opposite now and your sequel tanks, ending the franchise. Your dream of your very own cinematic universe may still be possible, but you’ve taken a major hit and there’s a chance the audiences won’t want to see the same thing 37 times. Ridiculous, I know.
Fortunately, much like how Rotten Tomatoes decides what films are good or not, there’s a similar system in The Executive, where if the critics may not have absolutely loved your Ronic the Red Hog family animation, audiences lap it up and regardless of reviews you’ll make a ton of cash. There’s also times where critics will adore your foreign language art piece but nobody goes to see it. Art certainly imitates life in The Executive and you can’t get too attached to your films, they may just end up breaking your heart.
You effectively have fifty years to see just how good you are at running a film studio, as the game finishes in January 2020. Then you’ll get a final score based on how well your studio performed across your entire reign and whether or not you’ve done enough behind it to last another fifty years without you at the helm. It’s a tricky balancing act throughout as much like every studio out there you’ll have plenty of hits but far more misses. If you focus on filling out your research labs and learning as much as you can so you can apply them to your next feature, you’ve got a solid chance but it’s never guaranteed. You could be Marvel Studios up until Endgame and take a Black Widow off the side of a cliff despite seemingly following all the rules. That’s why the feeling of getting a win is so appealing, you’re going to be chasing it throughout The Executive and it never lets up, much to its credit.
And as much as it’s hugely exciting when your features hit the green, the fact the game is so utterly devoid of a ‘sure thing’ makes it feel slightly unbalanced. Yes, you can do everything right and still get a giant flop, lowering the reputation of your studio. You could win Best Picture at the Gaspar’s and then not even see your budget back for the next four movies. There doesn’t appear to be a system which you’re looking for, again, much like Football Manager. My mind resorts to Gave Dev Tycoon, where once I found the formula I was cracking out multi-million sellers over and over again. It’s just not the case with The Executive and whilst it does keep you on your toes and makes you focus more than you probably thought you would have to, there’s still a level of the game treating you somewhat unfairly. But, hey, that’s showbiz kid.
And the game does take you up to 2020, the home distribution mechanic doesn’t feature any kind of streaming options, which is odd as they were of course more than established by that time. The lack of genre-splicing is also a bit of a miss. You have to choose one over another, which takes the fun out of experimenting with genre somewhat. I’d love to make a vampire buddy cop film, but I can’t because it’s either police ‘or’ vampire. I’d like to have the option to really delve into the themes and genre and make it feel like it’s really my studio, as whilst that is the case for the majority of The Executive, it certainly feels like it’s missing some key industry areas.
The tycoon genre rumbles on then and The Executive is a success chasing, Gaspar winning, spreadsheet filled bamboozler of a game that has plenty to offer and more than enough gametime to make yourself a success, just don’t jump in thinking it’s going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience.
This is Hollywood. If you’re not first, you’re last.
The Executive is out now on PC via Steam (review platform)
Developer: Aniki Games
Publisher: Goblinz Publishing
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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