You may have noticed that the Movie Business Edition 2022 didn't include many new features. One of the reasons behind this was the fact that I started a new postgraduate course in Data Scientists. It limited my spare time a bit. During my studies, however, I decided that my diploma thesis would be a project related to the Movie Business. I wanted to create an interactive internet system that would enable the visualization and analysis of data collected in MovieStats. In the following video, I wanted to show you this system and what information and statistics I can get from MovieStats and how they can affect the further development of the Movie Business.

Let me know if you are interested in similar materials, or maybe you would like to see some specific statistics from the game. Or maybe you want to do comparison of data from the 2020 Edition and the current and how changes in algorithms affected the gameplay.

For the record MovieStats is a service with player statistics and Box Office created based on players' movies. Due to the limited space on the server, however, not all film from a given game go there. These are only production from challenge mode, party game mode and Career. The export of films takes place only after the end of the game, but it does not occur for games the player used cheat codes (Donors have the ability to use cheat codes in the party game). Of course, the player must have an MovieStats account and have the export option enabled.

Due to limited server space, not all player films are exported. They are selected only from:

• the biggest profit
• highest rate of return
• largest total audience
• additionally, the best film with a profit of more than 500%
• all of which have won award on any Festival
• all marked withreactions

For example, if the same film has the largest audience and the highest profit, the second criterion selected is the next film with the second highest score.

So let's take a look at the various statistics of films created by players in the 2020 Edition.

Films in general

More than 7,100 movies have been exported to MovieStats, the vast majority of which are from party game (3,561), second from career mode (2,675) and least from challenge mode. The most films received 4 stars (this is more than 33.5%). Second in the order are 3* films (30.2%) followed by 5* (almost 28.5%). Of course, remember that to MovieStats mostly exported are the best productions and those… the worst (which won the Golden Raspberries). So it's hard to draw general conclusions here for the entire population of player-made movies.

As for genres, there are no surprises here. The more difficult the genre (later unlocked), the fewer movies of this type go to MovieStats.

However, the best results may be interesting, which at first glance seem almost improbable (but all indications are that they were achieved in the most honest way possible). The highest rate of return is 2060%. The biggest profit is over 1.3 billion! On the other hand, the most expensive film produced by the player cost over 1.6 billion (including advertising). As you probably guessed, he couldn't return of cost. The most awards won by one film was 17. And the most raspberries were 5.

Interestingly, the median profit from movies in MovieStats is over 41 million, where the median cost is only 19 million.

Movies and awards

Here we can take a look at how the films performed at festivals. And so, most films did not win any awards. And the ones they won were most often the Oscars (for sure it is due to the fact that at this festival there are the most categories where prizes are awarded). As for the category, the Oscars for the best screenplay reign supreme here – it is simply the simplest reward for a player to win. The award for the best movie is only the third category in which players receive awards.

Regarding the average statistics, here we have one more interesting median regarding the rate of return and it is 168%.

It is worth looking at the inconspicuous tables. It turns out that the most films in MovieStats are ambitious productions, while the fewest are representatives of artistic cinema (which was to be expected). There are no surprises further. Scenario level from A-Z as expected, as well as scenario ending (happy end, tragic, normal, ambiguous). About age categories you hit it somewhere in PG-13 – as the vast majority of films come from the 12+ and 15+ categories.

The statistics regarding the number of casts are also interesting. Well, most movies in MovieStats are movies with 3 creators (director + two actors). On the next position out of 7 (so I guess it is, in addition to the director, 4 actors, as well as a composer and cinematographer). There are the fewest films with the largest cast (10 and 9 creators) – which was a little surprise for me).

Now a few charts that show the relationship between various movie parameters and its profit, total cost (movie cost + advertisement) and advertising.

Profit, cost and advertising by cast size

I'll start with the most interesting number of cast. This is the most difficult element to balance but as you can see the game is doing extremely well with it. As expected, both the biggest costs and the biggest profits will be obtained for films with the largest cast. But when you look at the median rate of return, it's relatively flat regardless of the size of the cast.The hardest thing is to return cost of the film with the director and only one actor (which is intentional). Also, the film with the largest (10 and 9-person cast) pay the percentage the least, but remember that these are the most expensive films in this regard, in measurable values these are really large amounts. With a median cost of 96 million, the median profit is more than 135 million. That's nearly 40 million pure profit from a single film.

Profit, cost and advertising by rating

Now let's take a look at the cost, profit and advertising issues depending on the rating the movie receives. There are no surprises here (which is good). The better the rating of the movie, the more you have to spend on it, but you can also expect higher returns (both in nominal terms and in percentage).

Profit, cost and advertising by genre

Another interesting analysis concerns the impact of the genre on profits, costs and advertising budget. And here it is also interesting. It is obvious that some genres sell better than others and the game does not try to average the results here. Nevertheless, the spread between the median rate of return is also relatively small. You can make money on each genre (also lost, as shown by the most expensive adventure film. The highest median of the rate of return is from… easy to predict… films for adults (403%) next big surprises because of documents (206%) (looking at the budgets that players spend on this genre, it is hardly surprising, then we have comedies (203%) and another surprise is the theater (184%) (probably why all actors want their theaters.) I guesses that these unpopular genres pay off so well mainly thanks to awards won at festivals.

And here it is worth considering the specifics of statistics for a moment. If you are wondering about the fact of the high median profits for less popular genres (schiz, religious and theater), these are the last genres that the player unlocks. Hence, he must already have a lot of cash by then and hence there are probably high budgets for the production of these films (the exception here are religious films… well, but maybe here we are dealing with the case of Father Director – a joke for Polish players).

It is also worth returning to the first slide where you will find the number of such films in the database. There are relatively the fewest of them (with over 1,800 comedy films, there are only 15 schiz) – So they had to be outstanding productions. Hence, one cannot draw too hasty conclusions from such analyzes in isolation from other parameters. Yes “lie, big lie and statistics” is not just a catchy saying.

Profit, cost and advertising by target group (target)

Let's look at how the target audience influences the basic parameters of the films.

The median rate of return of films, regardless of the target, is very similar. And according to the assumptions, the most difficult thing is to obtain a high profit from artistic productions. Interestingly, the most you can earn on ambitious films (even more than on purely commercial productions). But here, it is for sure due to the fact that commercial productions cannot apply for awards at festivals. On the other hand, good, ambitious productions have a better chance of winning festival laurels.

Profit, cost and advertising by age category

For age categories, median returns are similar again. And the hardest thing to do is to make a big return on movies intended for adults – not to be confused by the genre of adult movies ie erotic – (the audience is quite limited then). When it comes to production costs and profits, here you are clearly the least investing (and earning) on films with no age limits. The other age categories have quite similar values both in terms of production costs and profits.

Profit, Cost, and Advertising by Sequel Type

Now let's see how they are different continuation type. And here's a curiosity. On average (median) you invest the most in prequels, and only then in sequels and spin-offs. In terms of rates of return, most types of production are very close to each other here. The median rate of return is the most favorable in the case of remaks. On the other hand, restarts are noticeably the worst.

Films in a nutshell

It's time for the last, summarizing analysis. Where the maximum values, median and average of such values as total cost (with advertising), cost of production (without advertising), advertising costs, return, profit, as well as the audience of the video (note: values in thousands) and statistics from the local Box Office (which show that the longest video stayed 10 months at the top of the Box Office) were collected again.

Summary

I admit that the main purpose of analyzing the players' films was to check how the algorithms were doing in the game, depending on various criteria under which the films are analyzed. In particular, how does genre and cast size affect the ratings / profits / rewards earned by films, because I must admit that the most difficult part of the game (and taking the most time) is the right balance of the game. And I am positively surprised by the results. Which does not mean that in the 2021 edition there will be some changes in this aspect (although now I am afraid if they were really needed. Well, we will probably see in a year when there will be an opportunity to make a comparison.

As you can see, although the Movie Business at first glance may seem like a relatively simple game, the mechanics underneath is not that trivial and there are many criteria that must be taken into account in order for your film to ultimately be successful. Therefore, although the game to many players may seem a bit random at the beginning… but as statistics show, strategies can be developed to lead to success. Not in every movie… but after all, the Movie Business is not math, but art… success is never guaranteed in this area.

If you want to be interested in any other statistics available in MovieStats, let me know before the reset.

A few additional notes and comments.

1. 1. if you see list of countries in Polish (as on video) just click Great Britain flag in top left corner next to MovieStats text. It should help and list will refresh to countries in English language.

2. Pardon my French… genre to bardzo trudne słowo

3. Give me a sign if you would like to see some other material on specific topic related to Movie Business game.

4. 4. It is possible to add person without IMDB profile. Then you need to choose No IMDB link and fill all properties (including filmography) by yourself.

5. Before you start adding the creator prepare
   a) link imdb
   b) photos with required format.

Just enter the fragment of the original review (one that does not contain names). Then you will receive a list of texts from the game containing the given phrase. And then selecting the option Edition, which will allow you to propose a better version of the translation of the given fragment. Your proposal gets to me for moderation. If everything is ok, it will be accepted and will appear in the future update of the review set. That's it. I hope that this will contribute to improving the quality of the English-language versions of the review.

Feedback

The first of these Feedback. There are 4 options that appeared on the page containing detailed information about the creators. They are located just below the table with parameters. And they are supposed to inform me if any information about the creator is out of date (data or parameters) or an update of old or poor quality photos is required.

Here are the available options:

• Person is dead – the option allows to report that the database lacks information about the creator's death (career end)
• Outdated params – some of the creators in the database are already there for many years and some of their parameters could change drastically. If you come across such parameters, using this option will cause that I will look at the statistics of a given creator a bit closer
• Outdated filmography – it's not just about refreshing the person's filmography but, for example, about indicating that a given person should already leave waiting room and go to the main set (because the number of movies in which he/she appeared as stars reached the minimum value that is 3).
• Photos needs update – It may happen that some of the photos are very out of date (in case the creator has only one picture and was added centuries ago or is simply of poor quality).

Clicking on one of the above links will send me an email with information from a given category. Which will make me to look at the problem. Try, however, not to abuse these options, eg. by clicking out-of-date parameters for the creator you have just added, and I changed its parameters during moderation. I have apparently stated that the values you have proposed are not consistent with the parameters of other creators.

[See image gallery at tomiga.linuxpl.info]

Filtering creators

The function I wanted to introduce for some time but somehow I did not have the opportunity to implement it. As the game database is really big, displaying and browsing all the creators in the set is a bit problematic. That's why I decided to add the ability to filter the creators in the set.

By going to the menu Creators-> Set-> Default where you can view all creators that are included in the set Default. In the table header you will now find filters that allow you to filter by the following criteria:

• country
• sex
• job
• start of the career
• status

Of course, filters can be combined with each other by narrowing the results for example. to all women, Directors, come from Polandthat are in the database.

Additionally, by clicking on the column heading you can go to the statistics from the given criterion. So, for example, to see how many creators there are in a given job or compare the number of creators from different countries. At the top, next to the number of rows returned, a link to reset filter parameters has been added.

I hope the options you find helpful and will be used not only be me.

Note: If nothing happened after choosing filtering, you need to refresh the browser's cache to load the new version of the scripts. For the Chrome browser, you can do this by pressing SHIFT + F5

Soon, another new functionality is being prepared ... which I hope you will use to help improve the quality of the game.

More about this, however, the next time.

A link to this post has, of course, been added to the section Director’s cut and now I invite you to read a long text about What's new in edition 2019 of Movie Business.

The reasons for which the creator might not be accepted (but not definitively rejected) the most common are two:

• weak technically photo (e.g.: deformed photo's proportions, poor cropping, too poorly visible face creator)
• inability to assess meaningful artists parameters

Actually, these are not reasons that permanently delete such a creator of opportunities to add the base game. However, currently the creators of those receive status rejected.

As of today the situation is little changed.

You will see a new status To update This means that the creator is not accepted but the person who threw the can apply a patch (zedytować creator). So really it worked so far, however, at this time, you can more easily be search for artists who really were the rejection of (for some reason, such as a duplicate – that is, the creator already exists in the database) from the situation when you make only some fixes (e.g. update the photo that does not meet the quality criteria).

The second status, which from now on will be available will be Waiting room. What is the waiting room? It happens that add to the database creators, who do not yet have too much experience. I must admit that the movie Business was a bit ennova creators and not every callow Colt had the possibility in the game.

Therefore, when adding the makers I have some policies that the creator must meet in order to be successfully added to the game.

And so the creator (except animki celebrity, celebrities, politicians) must have a filmography on IMDB at least 3 full-length film, which already have a review score of (IMDB Rating) and the creator appeared in them as a significant (is listed as Star).

Such restrictions but a little przyblokowania add to database "stars one of the series" also has a more pragmatic reason. You can not simply estimates the parameters of such creators in a way that is as consistent with other creators.

The parameters of the creators, though, are not entirely enumerated according to the formal algorithm, however, are based on a certain unwritten algorithm (which I have in my head – ale już dużo osób dodających twórców go opanowała – niestety nie da się tego zautomatyzować ze względu na zbyt dużą ilość danych, którą trzeba by było pobrać z IMDB potrzebną do ich wyliczeń). Dla twórcy, który nie ma wystarczającej ilości ocenianych filmów lub występował w filmie w roli nie znaczącej (czyli tak naprawdę nie miał dużego wpływu na jego końcową jakość) – nie ma można oszacować jego parametrów w sposób statystyczny.

So how come the idea for waiting room. Well, as I mentioned often filmmakers just starting their career path in the real Business. Therefore, perhaps for half a year or a year of their life will grow to the point that peace will be able to appear in the game. Throwing such a creator to lounges will be telling you that, in General, all of this is its time fine but creator probably is yet to come and play some significant roles in several productions yet, it will be included in the database of the game.

Mam nadzieję, że zmiany te nieco wyjaśnią powody nie dodania Waszych twórców i łatwiej będzie Wam zrozumieć powodu takiej decyzji.

For my part, I will try to review all your rejected creators and update their status accordingly using the new statuses (you should get the appropriate e-mail notification).

• Balša Milijaš
• Tomas Av
• andrew89 

Plenty of cult characters as usual was added by Łukasz Oleksiak.

Since the last zasypaliście me suggestions makers, which have not had time to review and verify any time soon you can expect the next update.

Today's update had one goal, test out new functionality in the MovieStatsthat is, that at the time of the release of new update set of creators, all contributors allowed to this version will receive an email with the information as proposed by their creators in the update. It is a kind of little thing but I hope it will remind you that your work associated with proposal makers has its tangible results.

Here one more Note If you get an email, and last not dodawaliście new proposals, that is, one with the added in the past by the creators had to update (may affect the data, parameters, or added photos basic or the iconic heroes played by that person).

The update will take place after launching a new game with the default set of creators (details can be found here).

In total, the default set of games already has 2567 creators.

I wish you pleasant reading!

In the context of the work on the MovieStats appeared, in fact, a new option that allows you to add your own iconic characters for a particular actor or actress. This movie shows in detail how to do it.

The video is recorded with the Polish comments but there are also subtitles in English. In addition, all examples have been presented on the English-language version of the game and MovieStats so that the material will be helpful also for all not speaking the language of Polish.

This is the first of this type of material for the movie Business, so let us know what you think about it. If you like it maybe in the future will follow movies about other aspects of the game.

In addition, after watching the video, you can run the game. Yesterday's version 0.9.2 contains more than 200 cult characters added by me. Immediately so you can try out this mechanism in practice. In MovieStats extended is also search engine. In addition to search it also allows developers to check whether a particular cult hero is back in the game. I hope that we also treat yourselves to add their favorite characters.