''Hollywood Mogul'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

published in 1993. It was designed and published by Carey DeVuono as the Hollywood Mogul Company. The game is an economic simulation of a movie studio. Players choose movie plots to use for a movie, set production budgets and select the talent. Goal is to create movies which make money. Players juggle the added concerns of movie budgets, cost over-runs, and irritable actors and directors in order to succeed. The original version was written in

Visual Basic Visual Basic is a name for a family of programming languages from Microsoft. It may refer to: * Visual Basic .NET (now simply referred to as "Visual Basic"), the current version of Visual Basic launched in 2002 which runs on .NET * Visual Basic (cl ...

. A

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

version was released in 1997. A sequel, ''Hollywood Mogul 3'', was released in late 2006.

Gameplay

''Hollywood Mogul'' has five difficulty levels to choose from, each with higher annual budgets. A higher annual budget causes higher monthly expenses, making it more difficult to keep the studio profitable, which provides a greater challenge to the player. #New In Town ($125,000,000 annual budget) #Still Green ($250,000,000 annual budget) #On My Way ($500,000,000 annual budget) #Hollywood Player ($750,000,000 annual budget) #Hollywood Mogul ($1,000,000,000 annual budget) Movies come in fifteen set genres, ranging from

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

, as well as six subgenres such as "farce" or "slapstick". Movies can rise and fall depending on what genre they are and what time of year they are released. Acting, screenwriting and directing talent also play a great role in the success of a film. More popular talent costs more to hire, but have the benefit of raising the noticeability of a film. Likewise, production budget,

special effect Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wor ...

s budgets and advertising play a big role as well.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

''s reviewer in April 1994 said that despite ''Hollywood Mogul''s "crude visual look... I have found myself spending dozens of hours as a Hollywood bigwig rather than playing dozens of more expensive and graphically sexy games". Despite the lack of limited or award season-oriented releases, he concluded that it "is a fascinating exercise for the detail-oriented gamer" preferring statistics over action or visuals. The magazine ranked ''Hollywood Mogul'' as one of the top three strategy games of all time in the magazine's 20th anniversary issue.

References

{{reflist 1993 video games Business simulation games DOS games Video games developed in the United States Windows games

Gameplay

Reception

See also

References