Quite recently on Discord there was, once again, a discussion about randomness in the Movie Business. More specifically, some players have a problem with the game's overall assumptions about total randomness when it comes to judging the creators' performances in the film. I do not want to develop this topic again (as I mentioned it in the game manifesto Movie Business for Beginners), because I consider it to be the main mechanics of the game, which makes the Movie Business a unique production and has its own character.
However, I decided to give doubters the opportunity to experiment with this randomness and find out for yourself why turning off this element will negatively affect the long-term gameplay.
Well, in the 2022 Edition, donors will receive a new cheat code "I do not understand art", which will change one of the key algorithms of the game affecting randomness.
How it works
Currently, when the production of the film begins, the game randomizes the initial rating of each of the creators participating in the production. And so it is manifested with a star rating from 1 to 5 for each creator.
Using this cheat code will ensure that instead of a random draw, each creator's default rating will always be 3*.
Of course, during the production of the film, as a result of various random events and specific decisions of the producer, these values may change for a specific creator.
Why is this cheat code only available to donors?
Randomness is built into all game mechanics and such a modification in one place "spoils" my concept of the Movie Business. I do not want players who come into contact with the game for the first time to be able to play its "broken" version. Additionally, changing this behavior will have many side effects that will make some of the other mechanics stop working as they should (but more on that below)
What are the consequences of using cheat code
After using this cheat code, trophies, saving data to the profile and exporting movies to MovieStats after the end of the game will be disabled.
Why I do NOT recommend using this cheat code
This cheat code changes the behavior only in one place and makes the whole concept of the game less consistent, which can be observed in many other places of the game. Here are some examples of where the game will stop working as expected:
- the final rating of the creators will usually be 3*
- very rarely there will be extreme ratings of 1* or 5*
- descriptive reviews will be definitely less diverse
- not all random events / events during production will take place
- it will be more difficult for creators to win awards at festivals (because they are awarded to artists with extreme ratings)
- the balance of the game will be disturbed
- film ratings will be much more uniform
- the game will be definitely more monotonous
- unsophisticated strategies will be very effective
- and for some many others... which even I am not able to predict at the moment
So as you can see, this is a very experimental "cheat code" which I do NOT recommend to use, but if someone wants to find out about it, they will get the opportunity to check how the game behaves in less random conditions.