Listening to the community! ( Wednesday, 31ste May 2006)

What a few weeks and even months it has been! You probably read the exciting news about what happened to Lionhead Studios and their transition into the Microsoft Game Studios family. This is very good for us and the games we're going to create in the future, there's no doubt about that. This means that we're moving onto new and bigger things now, but it doesn't mean that we're abandoning our other games. On the contrary!

Use the Stuntschool to train your daredevils

Especially for The Movies and the upcoming expansion pack we've got a load of news and updates planned. First of all; The Movies Online website had a big make-over. The previous design was good, mainly because it fitted in with the game and used a similar colour scheme and graphics. We were a bit tired of it and it was time for a new look, I'm sure our community will share that opinion.

Changing the design also gave us the chance to think about some additional functionality. Not only have we added extra features like the Stunts & Effects Charts and embeddable player code which you can use in your blog or website, but we've also got another big addition and it has to do with marketing your movies, Movie Posters!

The firemen from Stunts & Effects

Movie Posters have been a hot topic on the Lionhead boards for months, with a lot of people requesting posters and some very kind souls making them. However, now you'll be able to use your posters on The Movies Online website. We've reserved space on the frontpage to display a random poster submitted by a Studio. The way it works is you can upload a few posters to be moderated by us so you can use them when your movie is released. You then link a poster to your newly released movie and it will appear in the rotation to be shown on the frontpage. This will cost you some VC though so it's important that your poster is eye-catchy so that people will actually click on it and watch your movie. You can upload movie posters anytime, but I'd advise anyone to not leave it until the last minute. If you know your next big flick will be released next week – upload your movie poster way in advance so that it will get approved before the launch date of your movie.

Robots invading the miniture city set

Another one of the cool new features on The Movies Online is the monthly chart archives. We had this planned from the beginning, but due to technical reasons it wasn't fully implemented yet. Now it definitely is and it works a treat! Every month we'll hand out awards to the top 3 movies of every chart and take a backup of the top 25 which will be put in the Hall of Fame. Those same top 3 Studios will also get the webspace back for that movie which gives them more room for future uploads.