August 2008
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