Latest news
Citizen Siege not set aside yet
Despite what was suggested by Variety’s videogame blogger earlier in the week, Sherry McKenna has confirmed that the project is still in development, albeit not with originally‐announced partner Vanguard Animation.
Ben Fritz originally wrote on The Cute Scene:
It’ll be a while until we find out exactly what Oddworld’s up to now. But I do know it won’t be the ‘Citizen Siege’ animated movie that it was previously working on with Vanguard Entertainment. McKenna told me there were ‘creative differences’ and the rights are reverting back to Oddworld.
But speaking to GamesIndustry.biz’s Matt Martin, Sherry has denied the multi‐media sci‐fi story has been dropped:
Citizen Siege is a project near and dear to our hearts so while we are no longer developing it with Vanguard due to the famous ‘creative differences’, it is still in development.
The Citizen Siege feature film was announced by Lorne at the first GameCity two years ago as being in development by a partnership between Oddworld Inhabitants and John H. Williams’ Vanguard Animation. Since then, little news has been reported on the project, except that it will have two videogame accompaniments including the online multiplayer Wage Wars.
Sherry has also commented on the previous day’s news that Larry Shapiro is the new president of Oddworld Inhabitants:
Lorne has always had the title of president but now with our new model he is going to concentrate on what he loves most and that of course is the creative. Larry will get to deal with all the ‘stuff’ presidents of companies have to deal with. The good news is that we all see the future in a similar vein so that makes it very exciting.’
Sources: GamesIndustry.biz
Larry Shapiro becomes president of Oddworld
Larry Shapiro, formerly Chief Creative Officer at Brash Entertainment, has been named the new president of Oddworld Inhabitants. Shapiro was Oddworld’s agent when he was co‐head of CAA’s videogame department, and joins the company having left Brash—the game publisher recently turned into a skeleton crew during financial hardship—in July. OWI’s previous president, Lorne Lanning, will step down to focus more on the company’s creative side.
Speaking to Variety weblog The Cut Scene, Lorne says:
No one is more in stride with us than Larry. We both see the same future landscape. It’s a petty radical departure from the contemporary landscape. While we think there’s a number of barriers to break through, we think there are tremendous opportunities on the other side of the barrier.
Shapiro has similar high hopes that the new partnership will aid Oddworld’s new business model:
I have a great opportunity to add value to a company and to work with people who I am inspired by and who look to where the industry is going and not where its been. We intend to break the model of where games are today in a unique and entertaining way.
Considering Oddworld Inhabitants’ next release, The Cut Scene reporter Ben Fritz supposes it won’t be the Citizen Siege feature film produced in partnership with Vanguard Animation, having been told by Sherry McKenna that there were ‘creative differences’ and ‘the rights are reverting back to Oddworld.’
Sources: The Cut Scene
Lorne speaks at University of Connecticut
According to Gaius Darkfire of TeamXbox, Lorne Lanning was going to speak to the University of Connecticut Video Game Organization on Sunday 26 October. There are not yet any reports from the event.
Sources: Gaius Darkfire
GameCity 3 label by Lorne
The folks behind GameCity 3 have partnered with Nottingham’s Castle Rock Brewery to launch their first festival beer—Fine Ale Fantasy. The beer’s name was chosen by Paul Treneary in video game radio show One Life Left’s competition ‘What’s the Pint?’. The ale’s pump clip and bottle label will be designed by none other than Lorne Lanning.
Lorne appeared at the first GameCity where he delivered the festival’s keynote speech, in which he first announced Citizen Siege. This years event takes place in Nottingham, U.K. from 30 October to 1 November.
Sources: GameCity website
Abe wins Ugliest Hero award
GameDaily has awarded Abe of Oddworld the title of ‘Ugliest Hero’ in their feature ‘The Top Ten Ugliest Game Heroes’. Feature author Robert Workman adds: ‘Still, he’s charming enough that we wouldn't mind seeing him in a sequel.’
Xbox Oddworld destined for Steam
Lorne has spoken to Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer and confirmed that the Xbox‐exclusive Oddworld titles Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee and Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath will be available as PC games from the Steam Network ‘in the not too distant future.’ In his recent interview with Lorne, Nate was told that these conversions would wait for good Steam sales of the Abe games.
Sources: Eurogamer
Lorne: Consoles are a problem
After taking the stage at NVISION 08, Lorne Lanning sat down with GameDaily BIZ’s John Gaudiosi to talk about console vs. PC game development, user‐created content, fitting games into our increasingly fragmented daily lives, and talks a bit about the next Oddworld game, news of which was slipped by Jeff Braun earlier in the year.
Also, the final part of Nate’s interview with Lorne has now been published. Lorne talks about the bettering of the Oddworld universe, the new cast of Stranger, and the Oddworld theme tune.
Sources: GameDaily BIZ
Abe’s Oddysee and Exoddus on Steam
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (1997) and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus (1998) are now available to download in their entirity from Steam, Valve’s online digital distribution platform for PC games. A free demos of each title is available, but the full games can be purchased for a mere $9·99 each, or just $14·99 if you buy them together as part of the ‘Oddworld Pack’. What’s more, to celebrate the re‐release of the games, Steam is deducting 10% from all these prices for a week, ending 4 September.
News that Oddworld was going to be re‐released on Steam was first revealed to the online fan community by Oddworld Forums member Nate on 16 April, the very day he had just been told this by Lorne Lanning in person as part of his interview. However, the revealing part of the interview had not been published by OddBlog until today, coincidentally the day after the games’ online launch. This is the penultimate section of Nate’s epic and highly received interview with Lorne Lanning.
Now, though, fans of the first two Oddworld games can buy and download Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus legally, instead of scrabbling for remnant game discs from carboot sales and eBay. Furthermore, according to Lorne, good sales of these titles makes it possible that this relaunch will be followed up by Steam releases of Munch’s Oddysee and Stranger’s Wrath, the first time these games will have been made available for the PC.
Sources: Steam News, RabidZombie
The Making of Oddworld
Lorne has given a substantial interview to Edge magazine, detailing much of the overarching development of the Oddworld titles and brand, from the founding of the company to the closing of its game production studio, and how changing limitations in the video game industry have affected the series’ story and gameplay over the years.
Sources: Edge Online
Lanning speaks for digital art
Lorne has given an interview for VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi, in which he complements his comments at NVISION 08 by talking about the mainstreaming, acceptance, and authentication of digital art.
Sources: VentureBeat
Lorne at NVISION 08
Lorne appeared at NVISION 08 last week, where he spoke about digital art. Showing several examples of fine art (which Sylvie Barak of The Inquirer says ‘looked more like massive, complex, multicoloured bacteria than anything else’) and the recent trailer for Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil 2, he talked about how digital art is allowing science and physics to inspire the creation of impossible worlds, which are in turn an inspiration to scientists; how such datasets can be used by games and, in turn, movies; and claiming that students of the future will be submitting videos, not text.
Realtime coverage and live video was available from Ryan Shrout on PC Perspective. Digital art shown by Lorne includes ‘Grow of cubic bacteria’ by Václav Pajkrt, ‘Torn’ by Monsit Jangariyawong, and ‘Process + Propagation 14’ by Chris Bobotis. A collation of reviews and media is maintained by Xavier on the Oddworld Forums.
Sources: PC Perspective, Legit Reviews, The Guru of 3D, NVISION 08 Blog, The Inquirer
Lorne & Sherry at MARAMA; Lorne at NVISION
Lorne will once again be amongst the instructors in attendance at the ConceptArt.Org and Massive Black’s International Art and Design Workshop. The Marama workshop takes place at the Wellington Conventian Centre in Wellington, New Zealand on 13–16 November 2008. Sherry McKenna will also be instructing at the event.
Lorne will also be present at NVIDIA’s NVISION 08, a three‐day visual computing conference held in San Jose, California on 25‐27 August 2008. He will be interviewed by NBC 11’s technology reporter Scott Budman as part of Day Two’s ‘Visual Computing Perspectives: Interviews with Remarkable People’.
Watch out for the fourth installment of Nate’s interview with Lorne Lanning, published tomorrow morning on OddBlog.
Sources: ConceptArt.Org Forums, NVIDIA press release
Nate interviews Lorne Lanning
Earlier this year, my fellow administrator of the Oddworld Forums, Nate, was travelling through California and had the great fortune to be able to meet up with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning and ask him several questions, including several suggested by members of the Forums.
Nate has teamed up with OddBlog and allowed us to publish his transcript of the interview. The entire article is several pages long, and so we have elected to divide it into eight segments, to be published every Friday over the next two months. Part 1: Citizen Siege and current projects is online now. A full listing of the upcoming segments is available on the Oddworld Forums.
Lorne talks E3 with IGN
Episode 13 in IGN Insider’s To Catch an Editor video podcast features Lorne Lanning talking to Michael Thomsen and Dave Clayman for 90 minutes about E3 and other game conventions, game pre-release visibility and funding, retail and Steam, merging interactive and linear technology, voice acting in games, the gaming press, and democracy in corporate media. In fact, the interview is so long that it only ends when it does because the interviewers ran out of space on their hard drive to record the audio. Lorne offers anecdotes about his experiences with Oddworld at E3, and even brings up Penny Arcade’s Oddworld comics.
Sources: IGN Insider
The Oddworld Cinema on YouTube
The Oddworld Cinema, the Library’s repository of freely downloadable Oddworld videos, has opened a new branch on the epic video sharing website YouTube. This new channel will allow some of our videos to be streamed, a service the Cinema doesn’t currently offer. Due to copyright restrictions, not all of our videos can be uploaded to YouTube, but everything we have will remain in the Cinema for download.
Lorne in IGN Insider’s Hot Seat
Lorne Lanning has been interviewed by Michael Thomsen of IGN Insider’s new Hot Seat feature. The interview attempts to ‘dig deeper into [his] personal life, tastes, and inspiration’.
Lorne confirms working with Braun
Lorne Lanning has confirmed to various sources that Oddworld Inhabitants are working with Jeff Braun, but has not gone on to clarify what they are working on together.
Lorne acknowledges that Braun ‘let slip some comments’ during his talk to Wilfrid Laurier University while they are not ready to make any official announcement. There has been no confirmation over whether the game is set on Oddworld, in the Citizen Siege universe, or a separate world.
Meanwhile, online student newspaper Cordweekly.com has published its interview with Jeff Braun, conducted by Daniel Joseph prior to Braun’s speech, where Braun says he has been helping with the business side of things, guiding Oddworld though the ‘tricky minefield’ of ‘“gotchas” in the game industry.’
Sources: GamesIndustry.biz, ComputerAndVideoGames.com, Cordweekly.com
Maxis co‐founder working on new Oddworld game
Speaking at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, the co‐founder of video game developer Maxis, Jeff Braun, has revealed that he is involved in the production of a new Oddworld game. No details were given on any setting or story, nor did the report on Braun’s address by stuent newspaper The Cord Weekly make certain that Maxis itself was involved, but a slow production schedule is said to mean it will be years before the game ships.
Apparently, the game will feature ‘a revolutionary new 3‐D animation system allowing videogame players to experience a cinematic quality on a “1 to 1 scale” to that of computer‐generated motion pictures.’ This means that the game will be built out of the same digital backlot used to create any films relating to the game. This is the production model Lorne has been describing in interviews since it was announced he was shutting down Oddworld Inhabitants’ internal game development studio in favour of outsourcing programming and animation to other companies.
‘The rendering tools are getting so good now for 3D animation that you can literally create a linear animation and create a video game using the exact same objects. The tools are finally getting to the level where we can come out with a show and we can come up with a game,’ Braun says about this method, adding that players of the game would be ‘literally on the set.’ Braun hints that this new Oddworld project will be released episodically.
This should not be seen as news that Oddworld Inhabitants has stopped working towards releasing the Citizen Siege games and feature film. Lorne has stated that there are currently four projects he is working on.
Sources: The Cord Weekly
Limited edition Stranger’s Wrath soundtrack
A limited collector’s edition version of Oddworld music composor Michael Bross’s soundtrack to Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath is now available from Russian label KeepMoving Records. ‘Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath’ Original Soundtrack: Volume 1 contains the same music as the original release, but includes alternative packaging and CD art, and a 24‐page, full‐colour insert featuring track descriptions, Michael’s interview with Game‐OST, and reportedly‐never‐before‐seen Stranger’s Wrath CG and concept art. This release has only 500 copies, each available for USD7·99 plus shipping costs.
Michael’s latest album is the three‐track EP Dogs and Their Stars, released 29 April, and his upcoming three‐track EP Nomad will be released on 27 May. Preview tracks for both albums are available on Michael’s site.
Sources: KeepMoving Records, Soundtracks
EXPOSÉ 6 released
EXPOSÉ 6 is now available to pre‐order from Ballistic Publishing—publishers of The Art of Oddworld Inhabitants—and will start shipping in early June. Lorne Lanning sits on the book’s Awards Committee.
This year, five pieces by Oddworld artist Raymond Swanland have ben included in the digital art yearbook:
- ‘Fomori Nomad’ – selected for the ‘Fantasy’ category
- ‘Of What’s to Come’ and
- ‘Brothers of the Wind’ – both ‘Excellence’ in the ‘Creatures’ category
- ‘Books of the South’ – ‘Excellence’ in the ‘Warriors’ category, and available as a 220 × 297 mm bonus print with the limited edition of the book
- ‘Sea of Death’ – ‘Excellence’ in the ‘Conflict’ category