But there’s a new game out there with a delightfully silly approach to this problem: spoonerisms.
The Executive – Movie Industry Tycoon is a new movie-studio simulator from developer Aniki Games and publisher Goblinz. It was released this February, and in a better state than many of its competitors in the niche subgenre. While I wish the systems were just a bit more complex, it has enough detail to keep me coming back for more, without getting bogged down in some of the specifics that games like Showbiz Tycoon (where you painstakingly filmed your movies’ scenes, with limited mechanics) struggle with.
In The Executive, you launch a movie studio in the year 1970. As a movie studio executive, you can greenlight projects, hire staff, analyze trends in the industry, make decisions on when to distribute your movies (and how), and research new genres or tools for production and post-production. Things really start to sing in The Executive once you acquire every researchable unlock, allowing you to make calculated decisions about what projects you want to greenlight based on the trends in the market and the reputation of your studio. Do you want to make a crowd-pleasing blockbuster for the summer, a slasher for Halloween, or an awards contender in the fall? At the beginning of your file, you’ll have limited options, but by the end, you can have it all.
When greenlighting a movie, there are a few decisions to make. The title, of course, and the genre, budget size, and theme are all vital. But one of the most important is hiring the right director and star, and this is where The Executive’s spoonerisms come into play. For the uninitiated: A spoonerism is what happens when you swap the first letters of a two-word phrase or someone’s name — for me, it would be Vete Polk. And that seems to be The Executive’s general approach to having historically accurate talent to choose from without licensing those very famous people’s names.
In short, that’s how I ended up winning the 1976 Best Picture award at the Romys with Wohn Jaters’ The Great Diamond Caper, starring Kiane Deaton. (Side note: I would kill to see this movie. And yes, I named my executive Wilson Fisk and don’t remember why.)
Gaze upon the other nominees: Hohn Juston’s The Gentleman Aspiring to Rule, starring Cean Sonnery and Chichael Maine! Lidney Sumet’s Canine Midday, with Cal Apino and Cohn Jazale. And don’t forget Pteven Stielberg’s groundbreaking Teeth of the Ocean, starring Toy Scheirder and Sobert Rhaw (and surely with a fantastic score by Wohn Jilliams).
These names (and the synonym-filled titles for the CPU-controlled studios’ movies) bring me endless joy while playing The Executive. Beartheak feels good in a place like this.
