Oddworld no more
by Steve Parsons 
{ Apr 19th 2005 at 2:00PM }
Steve walks warily down the street, with his brim pulled way down low… Yep, another developer is
no
more. Though this time it's their own
decision.
In short, Lorne Lanning has seen where games are headed, said "No thanks!", and left for other pastures. Hollywood
Reporter (?!) has a good interview with Lanning about his decision.
Buh-bye, Oddworld. At least in games.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jesse J. Anderson @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
Haven't I been seeing a bunch of advertising for an upcoming Oddworld? like a darker take or something like that...
b. @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
Rumors of Munch's death are greatly exaggerated.
This story has been redacted as a error on hollywoodreporter's part ( http://spong.com/detail/editorial.asp?eid=10109288 ).
Gamespy's interview from a few weeks ago ( http://www.gamespy.com/articles/599/599811p1.html ) got it more right.
Oddworld is simply tightening their internal team to focus more heavily on IP and creative content, and outsourcing their further technical needs.
Eric Pobirs @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
Lanning appears to be backpedaling like crazy in that Spong article. Apparently he realized he needs to keep certain relationships intact. This doesn't change the fact that Oddworld is now just an IP operation and will farm out the game work to contract developers or to publishers who'll do the same. I can't help thinking the quality of the games will diminish greatly to be no better than the typical IP license game. Which more often than not is awful.
HE may not be out of the game business but he certainly appears to be abdicating responsibility for the quality of games based on his IP.
b. @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
Honestly, if you actually read the lines of the interview rather than between them, there isn't a whole hell of a lot to backpedal from.
He states in no uncertain terms that:
"THR: ... is that why you shuttered your studio?
Lanning: No."
"...what we're choosing to do is abandon 100% in-house development for games," a fairly nuanced and particular statement that, in conjunction with the former quote, somehow got muddled into LANNING SAYS EA SUCKS AND HE'S QUITTING GAMES BECAUSE OF THEM, due in part to a very poorly worded intro and title to the HR article, and due in part to the 'telephone'-ic nature of internet buzz.
Every mention of his frustrations with EA's handling of Stranger, and the publisher model in general, are spelled out in identical terms in spong's followup.
As far as outsourcing goes, I don't think it's necessarily right to compare typical Hollywood IP outsourcing (in which you would indeed have a stronger case for worry or doubt -- the occasional High Voltage/Starbreeze title withstanding) to what might eventually come of this situation. The GBA version of Munch's Oddysee was a let-down, but the decision to pare down the studio seems to take care of even something like that -- from the HR interview itself, they'll not be "completely consumed with the game productions" -- allowing more time for oversight and direction of licensed content.
Mark @ Dec 18th 2005 9:46PM
I always had the impression that the people behind Oddworld had "greater" aspirations: They wanted to be a CG animation studio and make movies like Pixar, PDI, the company that did Robots whatevertheirnameis. To be honest, I always felt, therefore, that their games were half-hearted at best. They never wanted to make games. They wanted to be bigshots who make movies.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.