… would be a doom-mongering and inappropriate headline. From the blog:

You should see our servers a bit as the average pensioner; old, dusty, it’s going downhill and the inevitable will happen at some point. Because the TMO servers are running on their last legs we wanted to strongly recommend everyone – in case you haven’t got a local copy anymore – to back up their online movies. We don’t want you to lose any of your films in case the poop hits the fan.

Clearly there are some people inside Lionhead who are worried about the state of the servers. It’s reasonable to assume that everyone inside LH knows about this. By the tone of the post, it seems that nothing is being done from the top: servers patched up, things work again, but no money or manpower invested into fixing the real problem that puts the data at risk. Lionhead being as caring as they usually are, that could mean MS doesn’t want them to work on TMO when Fable 2 is imminent.

[Extra paranoid interpretation: plug on servers is about to be pulled, LH not allowed to disclose it, advises backups.]

The Lionhead Studios Awards: Fable Edition competition has finally announced its winners!

We’ll start with revealing the three runners-up, who each will get 50MB additional storage space on TMO:

1. The Road Less Traveled by rysto - Good narration and story plot, nice set dressing and examples of modified content. The closing scene could have lasted a little bit longer but overall a very good and touching movie! You can watch the movie here.
2. Lionhead by Dr_House - Quite a long intro sequence but beautifully crafted nevertheless! An extraordinary amount of modding has gone into this movie it seems which makes it refreshing. You can watch the movie here.
3. Trents Fable by biggstrek - Absolutely GREAT camera shots and the way it is edited makes the car chase extremely exciting! Go Rogina! You can watch the movie here.

And finally - the great winner, taking home an Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, a signed copy of Fable 2 (when it is released) and 100MB additional storage space on TMO:

• A Split Second by kuroken - Rock solid camera work and exciting editing. Lovely story and great voice acting, splendid narration too! A deserving winner of an exciting competition. You can watch the movie here.

The Movies On Air’s Roger also got some interviews with Molyneux and Carter and aired them a few days back. (TMOA is organisation of The Movies-related internet radio shows.) There are some interesting things here; Carter and Molyneux have different opinions on whether or not the Fable engine was used as the basis for the Fable 2 engine (Carter: from scratch, Molyneux: every line altered), a lot of new creatures in Fable 2, how much polish will go into Fable 2 (lots) and how much attention they each pay to the forums. Download the show it was broadcast in here - Dene Carter is at the end of part 2, Molyneux near the beginning of part 3. Possibly most interesting is that recently Lionhead have been pushing The Movies community a lot more in their news updates.

- Read on »

There’s a new competition in TMO — Lionhead Studios Awards: Fable Edition.

The idea is that you make a movie based on Fable’s tag line: “For every choice a consequence.” You’ve also got to include some Fable music and custom content will give you a nice bonus. One entry each, between 5 and 8 minutes long, submitted before Monday 25th of June. One winner could get an Xbox 360 now plus a signed copy of Fable 2 when it’s out!

Naturally, this is The Movies: Online so we are offering movie makers and directors a slightly different take on this pitch and offer them freedom in the creation of their next big flick. We want you to incorporate the Good&Evil choices. You are free in your creative vision but we want you to incorporate different outcomes in your story, where the viewer can see what would have happened if your main character had made a different choice. As a reference we can give you Groundhog Day or The Butterfly Effect, but these are merely an inspiration.

We have one stipulation for this competition; the inclusion of Fable music in your movie. You can download the song here. In addition, we’d also like to encourage you to experiment with custom created content; here is a nice selection of links which should get you started.

Lionhead have just updated their website with some random stuff about what’s going on with The Movies and interestingly showing off and recommending quite a bit of modding stuff as well. They highlighted the modding section on the forum, a van, shield mod and a new modding website. It’s not much but an interesting change from the (now old) previous official stance: modding is not allowed on the forums nor will there be any support or mention. Perhaps Activision, the publisher, is no longer bothered.

There’s also mention of TMOA and Simply Nubert.

The Movies is to be sold online as its publisher, Activision, offers a bunch of games through Macrovision’s online “digital distribution solution” (think Steam clone). The thing will be DRM controlled, of course.

It has become clear that gamers are embracing the digital distribution of games. Activision is committed to delivering its content across multiple distribution channels and Macrovision has the ability to protect, and increase the reach of our games to our fans.Activision’s Jon Estanislao

The Movies is one of the first six games to be launched over the new Macrovision system. The others are three Call of Duty games, Gun and Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

From Gamesindustry.biz.

Woody, one of Lionhead’s community pets, confirmed our analysis: B&W3 and another TM game are not being worked on.

Of course, he confirmed this about eleven weeks before we wrote it, but that’s beside the point.

We’ve got a standard reply for this at the moment; Lionhead Studios is currently working very hard on Fable 2 and the brand new title. At the moment we have no plans making another expansion for any of our previous games nor do we have plans for a sequel for The Movies or Black and White.

I’m afraid that’s all we have to say about it.Woody, on the 11th of November ‘06

The Movies is now officially being sold for Macs, and Feral Interactive (the company that ported it from PC) is selling it at Macworld Expo. They also gave an update on Fable TLC and the special features of The Movies:

Feral head, David Stephen updated us on the status of its games; Lego Star Wars, Colin McRae Rally, and Fable: The Lost Chapters will ship this Spring. (A few technical glitches that delayed the latter two titles have recently been fixed.)

Stephen is also excited about the newly shipped The Movies because of updates Feral was able to make to the PC version. For example, Mac gamers have more format options when exporting completed movies. Also, because Feral wanted Mac gamers to be able to share videos on the PC-game’s Windows Media site, the Mac version includes a copy of Flip4Mac’s WMV Studio — normally a $50 utility — to render in that Windows codec.

Apple Games are featuring The Movies on their website. There’s a long article explaining what the game is about (more of a sell than a review, really), with some snippets from Andrzej Zamoyski (one of the designers) about the game. Quotes after the jump.
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The Movies is now officially shipping (Feral have noticed that they had been selling copies, it seems) in the UK & US, with copies in the EU expected mid-January.

Meanwhile, they’ve released a demo, which you can find here. System requirements are Mac OS X v10.4 or later, G4 1.67 or faster (including Intel; it’s a Universal binary), 512MB RAM and a 3D graphics card with at least 64MB VRAM.