How I organize Showbiz
How are your famous sims doing? I wanna share how I organize my Actors, Writers and Musicians. This involves the Get Famous EP, but is not limited to. As usual, 50% of my game is pure imagination :) I do make up films and books that never actually had a gig in my game.
Lately I've been focusing a bit extra on showbiz in my game. I found that sims in the Acting career often had quite low scores in related skills, as a result of me rarely following them to a gig. My Writers rarely had any fame at all, because after building their writer office and publishing their first book, I tend to leave them alone. I found that I miss good routines for pushing the creative sims up and forward. Most of them were simply ignored by me after getting heir first fame star.
So, I decided to improve this by organizing showbiz in a better way :)
Be warned, I normally get a bit detailed. Yet, you might get inspired, or sharing your own methods. In this thread I'll share tidbits as I keep developing this all. I figured there will be enough to run a separate thread. I'll focus on Actors, Writers and Musicians. In the future Comedians might be included with the acting talent agencies, don't think they are many enough to deserve their own agency, but they won't be given priority now.
Basically I made a system where each product (movie, commercial, book, released song/album) gets a success/quality score that is based on certain skills (by all involved) + a random factor (dice representing the unplanned, bad timing or advertising failures etc.). Actors will score by Acting x Charisma x Fame on the day of their gig. For a movie, Lead role count 3x, supporting role 2x and the Extra 1x. Similar for Authors and Musicians. This way the same artist will give better products as skills/fame builds.
So, why all this extra trouble? Because I wanted a way to decide the success of a given film or book. The casting becomes interesting because the more successful Leads, the better score. At the same time, involving a less experienced Supporting role might harm the success, because the total score might get lower.
Knowing a production's score, I also know if reviews are good or bad. Everyone wants good reviews, but then you certainly need a strategy. Judith Ward will never accept a role in a film featuring some unskilled Actor, because she would probably end up with a badly reviewed film on her CD. Every production company wants to rank high on those Top 10 lists.
I noticed that my many TV productions actually scored rather poorly! I never paid attention to those hosts, some actually have quite poor skills. And, say for a talk show, there will normally be a guest with no showbiz related score at all, dragging down the entire production's success score. With this system, Simmerville Studio's News Anchor since a decade actually got bad reviews for most jobs. This made me realize that I must focus more on his skills, as someone leading the TV News for a decade must have skills reflecting experience. There must have been a meeting at Simmerville Studio about having this guy replaced. Of course they keep an eye on the ratings! Also the host of the rather popular Simmerville Show, Fritz Mervil, scores poorly , but as he is the CEO of the production company, I guess he is safe - besides, some of his shows were saved by a superstar like Judith guesting :)
I also found that everyone performing on film or TV ought to be signed with one of the talent agencies. For the first time I took the time to learn about their differences and specializing. I used to think those agencies were random, but no, there is a finally a talent routine in my game... more about that later.
Anyhow, this all makes for realistic consequences, the urge to build at least some skills, and a more interesting side of casting a production, too. Also my blog's gossips column will get a lot more gossips to dive into ;) I'll share more about this all as each involved company will release their new webpages this RL Winter. You'll find more about this in a while 😃
