MovieStarPlanet (2012-present)

MovieStarPlanet
Welcome To MovieStarPlanet, a boring game where you just make movies that are just made using "Drag and Drop", poorly made art books, and barely make any friends.
Genre(s): Massively multiplayer online Platform(s): Microsoft Windows macOS iOS Android Release Date: 2009 (full release in 2011) Developer(s): MovieStarPlanet ApS Publisher(s): MovieStarPlanet ApS Country: Denmark

MovieStarPlanet is a massively multiplayer online game released in 2009 by Danish company MovieStarPlanet ApS. Despite the game originating in Denmark, it has servers for many languages, such as English, French, Finnish, Spanish, and Polish, to name a few.

Premise

You can create your own Movie Star and modify them by buying clothes for them and touching up their physical appearance using cosmetics at the Beauty Clinic. The main objective of the game itself, however, is to make movies, which can be rated, shared by others, and commented on. The game also has a leveling system and requires membership to receive the full experience of the game.

Gameplay

In MovieStarPlanet, the players take over the role of a movie star avatar, which can be customized in various ways by buying clothes or room decorations. The avatars can meet each other in the game world, and then chat publicly or privately. When a user logs in, they are introduced with a spinning wheel that can be spun daily, with the user being able to receive different amounts of "StarCoins". The main premise of the game is to gain experience points called Fame, which is then used so users can level up.

The main microtransactions consist of the games ''VIP'' membership. The VIP membership has 3 tiers: "VIP", "Elite VIP" and "Star VIP". A VIP membership purchase also includes StarCoins and diamonds, with each tier including more than the previous one. The different tiers also differ in the maximum amount of friends able to get, the number of extra spins on the StarCoins wheel and more. Each tier can be purchased for a week, a month, 3 months or a year. The game has spending limits, meaning the players can only spend some amount of money within a certain time frame. VIP memberships can also be received for free by winning the weekly competition.

History

In 2007, Claus Lykke Jensen and his partner, who were at the time students from the University of Copenhagen, envisioned the initial idea for MovieStarPlanet. They signed up for an e-learning development pool project from the Ministry of Science. The goal was to develop a game that could improve children's English language skills. After two years of e-learning, the commitment condition for a grant was fulfilled, and the work on the game started. The same year, when his partner left the project before the business took off, Jensen became the sole founder of the development company. The game launched in May 2009, and was originally mainly focused on the animations players could create. It launched exclusively in Denmark, but has since grown to be available in 16 countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania. The game was designed with children aged 8–15 in mind.

By 2013, the game had over 100 million registered users.

At the 11th European Conference on Game-Based Learning, it was reported that MovieStarPlanet was, in 2014, the most popular game amongst 9–12-year-old girls in Norway.

Merchandise

In 2012, it was announced that MovieStarPlanet would be cooperating with the publishing company Egmont to create a MovieStarPlanet Magazine. Each issue of the magazine comes with a code players can redeem in the game to then receive digital cosmetics, such as ''StarCoins'', the currency used in the game, or clothing items for the users' character. The magazines contents include fashion tips for the users, comics, competitions readers can participate in and more. In August 2021, the 100th issue of the Polish version of the magazine was released.

In 2021, MovieStarPlanet partnered with Panini to create a trading card collection in Poland. The cards consisted of 220 different designs, split into six different categories.

Bad Qualities

1. Despite dying down a bit, the game has an awful community.
   • A lot of the players are rude and snobby and will exclude you as if you're either a player without membership or a low-leveled user.
   • Too much drama abusers, the forums are full of drama, all they like is nothing, they are rude to you.
   • Many players will accuse you of stealing their outfits, even though you might have been inspired by the outfit they made.
   • The rare items and traders. If you are "rare trading" with a user, there's a quite high chance you're going to get scammed and have your rare items stolen from you, so it's quite risky.
2. There are so many fake photos, such as when a person pretends to be a celebrity such as Britney Spears and Kylie Jenner, and the former's photo says: Me (Real Not Fake), everyone says that they are fake, so celebrities don't play MovieStarPlanet.
   • In 2016, a new NPC was added, named Holly Nova, which caused a lot of hate. Holly Nova mainly posts celebrity gossip, and it receives a lot of hate.
3. There are also fake hackers in MovieStarPlanet, such as back in 2012, Anonymous was the hacker, but from now on, there are fake accounts and hackers.
   • Back in 2016, Hallo123, a hacker, hacked MovieStarPlanet, which means MovieStarPlanet might have become broken.
   • It is super easy to hack the game, meaning you can bot movie views to get StarCoins and fame. Spawn Ultra rares, and lastly get rare skin and rare eyes via Cheat Engine.
   • The game was hacked on May 29, 2020, with many of the high scorer's accounts got changed to a Dark Gray male with weird eyes, causing many users to contact MSP to fix their accounts, but they didn't fix many of the accounts. Although it's quite neat to see how the male body types with the female faces are mashed together, making them look buff.
   • The game was then hacked again in 2023, and also suffered a massive data leak of multiple user accounts.
4. For years, the game has had a very severe lag problem. You can't do anything without the game severely lagging, unlike their other games BooniePlanet and BlockStarPlanet.
   • In 2019, the developers forced a lot of users to download their software, causing users to quit MovieStarPlanet because of their software is too laggy for old computers, and sometimes, even the new computers can lag.
5. The characters look ugly, as the characters looks like Bratz dolls. When a user has VIP, they look even more ugly.
   • The avatars aren't very appealing nor designed well and give a poor sense of body image to players, and their animations are no better either, as they're very glitchy and they do not resemble human movement at all.
6. There are almost no new big updates, all they do is new themes, and for new themes they reuse their old stuff to match with the theme.
   • It wasn't even updated until 2021, when the PC version now allowed you to get boys clothes, even if you are a female avatar.
   • The Mobile version has less features from the desktop version, downgraded graphics, and it wasn't updated since 2015.
7. In the Danish server, it is extremely easy to get 2009-2010 accounts via password guessing.
8. False advertising: The commercials for MovieStarPlanet excessively hype it up, as if there is so much to do in the game. However, there isn't even that much to do aside from making movies, showing off your creative abilities with "ArtBooks", and some other mediocre features.
9. A lot of the clothing in the game is overpriced. While you're on the topic of prices, the main currencies of the game are called StarCoins and Diamonds. Neither of them can be received easily, save for means of having your movies viewed, or buying them with your mom's credit card.
   • The membership for the game (VIP) is also overpriced to some extent as well for how little benefits it gives, although it isn't as bad as Roblox's pricing system for its currency, Robux, and its membership.
10. The leveling system is really slow. Once you reach the status of Level 20, it will take you forever to get to the higher levels.
11. Pixi Star herself. Pixi is an NPC added to the game sometime in 2015 that solely exists to help the new players out with MovieStarPlanet, and how the game works. Once she's done introducing herself, she will send you a friend request, and there is no way whatsoever to deny it or unadd them. It's really pointless to have her on your friend's list because you can't even interact with her. All she does is promote her newly created content. The male equivalent of her, Zac Sky, acts exactly like this too.
12. The game has a very poor moderation system.
    • You can get banned for really silly reasons, and even they won't show the reason.
    • Back when the game was on browser, the YouTube player was poorly moderated. Where many videos filled with gore and swears can be found, but videos with minor gore will be hidden.
13. Their second game MovieStarPlanet 2 is quite bad and was rushed. It has no music, no movies, and lots of stuff is missing from the original. Although it could be mentioned that the artwork is much better, though it's still ugly.
    • The game also crashes a lot on mobile.
14. The music, while great, was very low quality (this suffers for some MovieStarPlanet's tracks).
15. The Movie system is just you dragging and dropping stuff to make an animation, which gets boring.
16. Most of the backgrounds were stolen from Vyond, some of which are stolen from the adult animated sitcom called Family Guy.
17. The YouTube feature is still inoperable.

Good Qualities

1. It used to be good in the past, before 2012.
2. There are also some nice users in the community, like mybeau, BLORANGETIGER, and Waterfallstream.
   • Some of the MovieStarPlanet videos are decent.
3. The most popular servers in MovieStarPlanet are the Polish servers, and the community is considered far better than the American servers.
4. Some items are nicely designed.
5. It has some nice features, like Design Studio where you can make your own clothing.
   • You can upload photos to use in your artbooks.
6. Unlike the rest of the servers, the Danish server has no lag at all. This is because it's where the developers are from.
7. As mentioned earlier, the music is great.

Reception

Leslie Crenna from Common Sense Media has rated the website as suitable for users who are 16 or older, and has stated that the "content and privacy issues raise way too many red flags for even savvy Internet users", while Online Safety UK has rated it as suitable for kids who are 9 or over, with "added caution from parents". Dana Anderson from Common Sense Media, reviewing the mobile version of the game, also rated it suitable for people aged 16 or older, stating "this app is too simplistic for teens' meaningful use, and the content is not appropriate for younger kids", along with stating that it "also reinforces messages about consumerism and appearance that parents may not want to reinforce."

The game won an award for innovation and creativity at EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2014.

Controversy

MovieStarPlanet has stated that they are cautious of kids' online safety and has been certified by COPPA's kidSAFE Program. Their head of safety, Vernon Jones, attended the Global Digital Citizenship Conference in 2013 at Melbourne. However, many articles have reported instances of grooming and underage users having received inappropriate/sexually explicit messages on the game.

Sequel

A sequel, MovieStarPlanet 2, was announced on October 25, 2019.

Trivia

• When the website first fully launched in 2011, it was owned by Cartoon Network. However, in 2014, it was bought by the MovieStarPlanet ApS, the company behind BlockStarPlanet and formerly BooniePlanet.
• Despite its bad reputation, MovieStarPlanet won an award for Most Innovative Company in Denmark in 2014.
• In late 2020, the website got revamped and you cannot play the game anymore unless you download the PC version, however for some Chromebook users they have to use the mobile version which has less features.
• In 2014, they have made the infamous "internet safety" video, which has spawned various memes among the game's community for its laughable dialog and inconsistent editing.

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