The first part of our demonstration showed us the newly simplified user interface for the game. Once of the key elements the team wanted was to make sure that most of the information the player needed to run their studio was on the playfield rather than in layers and layers of dense charts. Thus controlling your studio is as simple as picking up your personnel and dropping them off where you want them to be. During our demo we watched a writer get picked up and get dropped off in the studio writing office. He quickly got to work on our next big blockbuster. Other personnel were shuffled around just as easily. If we needed a cameraman who had a better relationship with a celebrity, a few context-sensitive information windows appeared right next to the character we were talking about and we could pull him off the turkey he was working on and move him onto the set of our next star-studded blockbuster -- before our star had a complete breakdown.

In fact, checking out the progress of our latest film also brought us to the second part of the game, the care and feeding of celebrities. Every star in the game has a Sims-like personality including likes, dislikes, relationships, secrets, desires, strengths and weaknesses. A major portion of the game is managing your portfolio of stars and making sure that they're kept happy enough to put out good work in front of the camera -- without being so happy they drop dead of a drug overdose or get caught in bed with the absolute wrong person. During our demo, for example, we were working on a big-budget action movie in the mid-1980's, which meant that our leading man was going to have to get slimmed down and bulked up (and maybe a bit dried out). Our female lead, on the other hand, had had a nice, steady career in character driven pieces, but if she was going to hit the big time, her... err... "womanly assets" were also going to have hit the big time. A quick stay in the studio clinic for a little liposuction and plastic surgery took care of that.