And the videogame is...

The Movies. Yup. The game that I've chosen to play for Spring term is Lionhead's The Movies using my Mac. The Movies is a simulator game in which players take the role of a Hollywood mogul in creating and managing a studio and creating films beginning in the 1920s and proceeding through the history of film. Originally released in 2006, the structure of the game is similar to the business-management “tycoon” games managing the resources of a movie studio (facilities, sets, actors, directors, etc.). Additionally, much of the interest in the game is the ability to create films using tools built into the game and also export movies to share on the Internet. (Machinima is a brand new term for me, but may reappear with quite a bit of frequency in this blog.) With these two elements, there seems to be a great deal of potential for immersive and engaging gameplay and, with the ability to easily export gamer-generated movies, the potential for a significant online presence is considerable.

Here's a quick sample of a video made from The Movies from YouTube.