Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Movie Boss

This is topic Movie Boss in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 03-14-2005, 03:05 PM:

I just had a thought run threw my head. While I was in high school before I joined FT, I use to play a game online called Movie Boss. I was wanting to know if anyone here played the game before, and if anyone knew what happened to it. I know that just one day out of the blue, it was no longer coming up, and now the domain www.movieboss.com is up for sale.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-14-2005, 06:35 PM:

Who cares?

Posted by Dean Kollet (Member # 1789) on 03-14-2005, 06:37 PM:

After reading a few reviews about the game online, I'm curious as to the gameplay and whatnot and ultimately, where it went.

Posted by Thomas Dieter (Member # 2507) on 03-14-2005, 07:35 PM:

Well Dean, the game play was really simple. You started out with a six screen multiplex anywhere in the nation or canada.

From there you could buy upgrades such as Stadium Seating(SS), Digital Sound(DS), and Digital Film(DF) for each individual screen so that you could maximize your profit off of what ever movie you played there. I think that was what the 3 screen upgrades were(PSA).

Then you had things like slide advertisement, arcade, extra parking, expresso stand, and 4-6 other items that weren't related directly to the screen, rather they were related to the income of the entire theatre(APSA).

Now in the first version of MB, called Act I, you could purchase 4 more screen at your first location, and then purchase another location for another 6 screen theatre. From there, you had to start over again. In the second version of MB, Act II, you could purchase up to 10 locations in the nation like CA, WA, OR, ID, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, PA and then purchase mirrors of those locations.

The basics of the game was you owned the theatres, you booked what movies played in it, and where they played. You got paid off of the PSA of a movie (per screen average). If you booked a movie that made 12 million in the first weekend on 500 screens nation wide, you got paid 24,000$ for each screen you had it playing on, and you were capped at 2 bookings per location.

These were the main fundamentals of the game, and if there are any other question about it, I'd be happy to answer them.

I did some research for information on the game, and why it went away, but this is all that I have found.

Movie Boss Closure Letter.
This was the first email we got on September 6, 2000:

Dear Movie Boss members,

Since its conception over three years ago we, the creators of that game you've all come to love, have maintained our optimism over the many hurdles we have faced. Not created as just "another way to make money," Movie Boss came into existence for one main goal: to give the internet community a different type of movie game that was not only fun but strategic and intelligent.

From its concept, there were many late night meetings among us on how exactly to put together the game. The rules took many hours to lay out. The coding at times seemed extremely overwhelming. Startup and legal costs needed to be acquired. Beta tests needed to be conducted and maintained. Bugs needed to be worked out.

We overcame these hurdles.

Debuting in late February of this year, Movie Boss experienced almost overnight success. After Entertainment Weekly ran its favorable review of the game, we scrambled constantly to keep the game online and operational despite the technical determents we had been faced with.

We overcame these hurdles.

A little over six months later, the creators of Movie Boss face yet another hurdle. Over the past 60 days, we have been working hard to secure advertising revenue to not only keep the game operational, but to expand the game technically. Despite reaching the golden goal of over 100,000 web page views per week and an impressive 10% click-through rate on our banners, companies have been reluctant to expose themselves to Movie Boss players and advertise within the game. Economics of the theater business and weariness of past dot-com failures have been the primary reason behind our inability to make many strides in acquiring the revenue needed to continue Movie Boss.

We are now facing our most challenging hurdle of all.

It is with deep and disheartening sadness that as of September 14th, 2000, Movie Boss will be forced to close its doors to the internet gaming public. Despite its pretty looks and simple concept, Movie Boss is a complex game to maintain and needs more than just a simple web page server to operate. Any monies generated since its debut have been use exclusively to keep the game in operation. Lacking any foreseeable options, we simply have run out of funds to keep Movie Boss going.

Until September 14th, we will continue to work as hard as we can to keep the game alive for not only the next 30 days, but for many months to come. We cannot guarantee success. Knowing our closure may be inevitable, we felt it was important to give our players notice now rather than to simply shut down overnight without any warning at all.

Each of the creators at Movie Boss would like to not only extend our deepest apologies for this unfortunate event, but we would also like to warmly thank each and every player who has made Movie Boss what it is today: a great online movie game supported by many wonderful players. Thank you all very much helping us realize our goal of being part of a great game and a great gaming community.

Alan, Bruce, Gerd and Linda
Movie Boss, Inc.

Sincerely,

The Movie Boss Administration

Having known one of the admins almost personally, as he lived in Portland, OR, this is really saddening. If I could find a way to contact this person I mose certanly would.

Posted by Darryl Spicer (Member # 711) on 03-14-2005, 08:49 PM:

It's downfall was the lack of money and the fact that people stopped playing because there was no way in hell to ever catch up to the leaders once you past all the people who either quit playing or just did stupid play moves. I played consistantly until it shut down. I enjoyed playing the game...wish they could have found a way to keep it going.

Posted by Chris Brown (Member # 2800) on 03-15-2005, 11:54 AM:

Sounds pretty interesting actually...I've always hoped there would be one of those Tycoon games with this premise. Too bad I missed the chance while it was still around!