Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer and voice actor. He is the co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants and is best known for creating the Oddworld series including Abe's Oddysee, Abe's Exoddus, Munch's Oddysee, Stranger's Wrath and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!. He is currently working on Oddworld: Soulstorm.
In part 1 of our 2 part interview, Lorne presents his path growing into the role of an artist as a social critic and lays out the specifics of how he weaves an artistic message into his games. He also reveals secrets for creating game worlds that have lasting fan cultures and stand the test of time.
**Jordan here, I just wanted to add that this interview was very inspiring to me personally, and helped me reconnect with why I make games, and what I would like to achieve in coming years. I feel that the way Lorne expressed his point of view up in this interview was an incredible gift to our community. I hope you'll accept his challenge to make great entertainment that is also great art!
"To have a really lasting fan culture, you need to have more depth in your content to really make people connect to it." - Lorne Lanning
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Stream by clicking here.
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Connect with Lorne
Twitter: @lorne_lanning
Web: Oddworld
Selected Links from this Episode
2001: A Space Odyssey
Red Dawn
Star Wars
The Twilight Zone
Exploding Kittens Game
Cuphead
It's a Wonderful Life
No Man's Sky
Pokemon Go
New-n-Tasty!
Nintendo
Playstation
Atari
The Mission of Art by Alex Grey
Find a Tree - by Daniel Armstrong
An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
Featured Show Highlights
Lorne talks about his transition from special effects director at Rhythm and Hues to the creator of Oddworld [3:30]
Find a Tree - by Daniel Armstrong Lorne shares an inspiring story about a book called Plain and simple truth of there are no excuses to make things happen, just do your thing. [24:20]
Lorne dives deeper into the importance of creating experiences that people can engage in when playing video games. [26:00]
Lorne explains what he learned studying what drives lasting fan cultures in everything from film to music to games. [31:35]
People Mentioned
Jack Goldstein
Joseph Campbell
Jordan Weisman
Tim Schafer
Stanley Kubrick
Chris Roberts