From OddWorld to Hollywood

Game designer Lorne Lanning, creator of the well-known series of titles centered in Oddworld (Abe's Oddysee, Stranger's Wrath, etc.), has been "away" from gaming for quite a while now. After announcing the next title in the Oddworld Cycle, he surprised everyone by turning his company and his attention to the world of movies and television. Edge caught up with him for an interview on what it is like to work in the world of Hollywood, the reasons behind his decision to change the focus of his creative efforts, and the details of his new project Citizen Siege (a title both movie and game). Particularly interesting are his comments on games as a medium. He comments: "I have no doubt that games are the most powerful medium we've ever had, but we're still in the tinker-toy stage. We just have to blow out to the point where a game can change the face of political opinion, like a movie does. Lord David Puttnam was firmly convinced that the civil rights movement in America was enabled to happen because it was filmed for television, and offered insight and compassion to the audience. It made issues relevant, and enabled people to see from a different perspective. That's when a medium really has power - the idea of the artist, mythologically, is to show us the way, or the wrong way, even."

Comments

Bad Signs

[MBraynard]

Oddworld games - at least the one or two I played - have a decidedly anti-corporate tone. Given the Lannings comments on the Civil Rights movement and older media like movies, I wonder if he wants to push his games to be more of an activist vehicle than they have in the past.

Which is all well and fine... as long as the games are still principally fun and he doesn't forget that the reason people load up Abe + co not to learn a lesson but for the same reason people head to the movie house - to have an escape and to get some enjoyment.

Better that than having games that get the same 'You must go see this film - the message is so powerful' swill (Siriana) that tries to guilt you into going to some film rather than to one you would enjoy (Borat).

But is Hollywood ready...

[bckrispi]

for a story that involves taking psychic control of one's own explosive farts?

Re:Oh spare us

[Dogtanian]

You can keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better Why would it make me feel better? I'm not an artist, and I'm not a particular fan of the guy that created Oddworld (I played the first in the series the better part of 10 years ago, and that's it).

about yourself but propaganda is the basest form of art. Do you classify *any* form of art which has more than purely aesthetic value (and *nothing* else) as propaganda? And do you lump this all together with the worst pack-of-lies, misleading, simplifying, fallacious, emotion-inducing, crowd-pandering propaganda out there?

What's worse, artists who do it are usually self-righteous pricks who've convinced themselves that they're on some sort of high moral ground. Some of them are.

Anyhow, you missed the point I was making. Whether or not you view them both as equally reprehensible, there's a difference between using your art to push your own point-of-view and hiring it out to push someone else's for money.