VERY MUCH WORK IN PROGRESS. Will be updated as I have time.

SPOILERS FOR POTENTIALLY ALL TAGS IN THE GAME -- YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Scoring is on a -5.0 to +5.0 scale, which I've dubbed as follows for ease: Disastrous, Extremely Bad, Very Bad, Bad, Slightly Bad, NEUTRAL, Slightly Good, Good, Very Good, Extremely Good, Excellent

*NOTE FOR WAYWARD SOUL*: In the file where all these values are kept, the Wayward Soul straight up just... doesn't have weights. It's not that they're all neutral, they just aren't there. Similarly, Wayward Soul has neutral compatibility with every single other tag in the game. Weird.

NOTE: This guide contains every playable role (protag/antag/supporting) I could see in the files, so if you would prefer to avoid spoilers and uncover these yourself, turn away now!

First, a guide to how aging works - it's different for men and women, so pay attention!

---

As a basic piece of advice, there are 6 audience groups, split across 3 age groups and 2 genders - Teen Male (TM), Teen Female (TF), Young Adult Male (YM), Young Adult Female (YF), Adult Male (AM), and Adult Female (AF). I'm calling the T groups Teens in this guide because of the lettering, but they can also be assumed to be children - their interests are a lot more... immature.

First and foremost, do not advertise solely based on genre(s)!!! I cannot emphasise this enough. Sure, audiences have preferred genres with different weights, but every single tag in the game has an audience compatibility score. Location, protagonist, events, you name it - audiences care about it. For instance, locations: Modern American Town/City are both neutral, but Adults hate Fantasy Kingdom, and men even more than women - Teens, on the other hand, both love Fantasy Kingdoms. Similarly, Adults enjoy movies where Divorce is a theme or event, but Teens despise it with a passion.

I could probably start to write up a complete tag/audience compatibility guide at some point but this will be far in the future so these general tips will have to do for now! Begun work on a tag-audience compatibility guide, please see relevant section! (Very much WIP).

For the advertising companies, I'll list what I've been able to discover/assume below. Please don't treat this as complete gospel, given I'm not sure what weights the game puts on what elements, but more as a general guide as to who is advertised to and how. If more companies unlock I haven't encountered them yet because I keep restarting for fun (tutorial skip is my most anticipated feature rn).

NBG: Adult Males & Adult Females, could not see any particular score weighting

ROSS & ROSS: Adult Males & Adult Females, again no score weighting

VIEN PASCAL: Young Adult Males, Young Adult Females, Adult Males, Adult Females, weighted on artistic score

SPARK: Young Adult Males, Young Adult Females, Adult Males, Adult Females, weighted on commercial score

NATE SPARROW PRESS: Young Adult Males, Young Adult Females, Adult Males, Adult Females, no particular weighting

VELVET GLOSS: Teen Females, Young Adult Females, Adult Females, weighted on commercial score

PIERRE ZOLA: Teen Males, Young Adult Males, Adult Males, weighted on artistic score(?)

SPICE MICE: Teen Males, Teen Females, Young Adult Males, Young Adult Females, weighted on commercial score(?)

Similar to how I explained above that every tag has an audience weighting, every tag also has a weighting with every other tag in the game (or, at least, in most cases from what I can see). The work the devs have put in here is insane, and absolute kudos to them. Your script score is therefore impacted by even more factors than you might thing - I don't know exactly how it's calculated, but the location, genres, protagonist, antagonist, supporting characters, themes, and finale all have compatibility ratings with each other, and these will all impact your script's scores.

Tags all seem to have different commerical and artistic values, from what I can see. Again, not quite sure exactly how these impact on the final script, but for example: cowboy protagonists seem to raise commercial score to some degree, but lower artistic score a little (guess they're just too overdone, huh?), whereas a finale where a wrongdoing protagonist avoids punishment raises artistic score yet lowers commercial score (more gritty, I suppose).

Wondering why no one is showing up to review your movie? Reviewers also all have different requirements to even show up to review you. These can be anything from artistic score (Bonegrinder) to having a certain % in the Detective genre (Criminal Stories), etc. If a reviewer comments on a specific character, like an actor or director, this is also a condition to be met. For instance, for me, Southern Nights always seems to comment about how hot {ACTOR'S} kissing scenes were, or how {ACTOR} is too good for this movie, when I put a young, commercially successful man in a romance movie -- even if he's not the lead.

More of a general one now but for everyone asking to rename their actors - you can! It's a perk you unlock under the Behemoth studio policy (unlocked in 1933). You can have your thoughts about having this locked behind a certain path, but if it's something you desperately want, that's how to get it. Similarly, to smash through your talent's development ceiling - to get that Wendy Carpenter achievement, for instance - there's a building under the Boutique studio policy to let you do that. (Note about the second one: I've never personally been able to do it because the Pollux bad-is-good bug seems to be kicking my ass in every save, but I know it's technically possible!)