I GIVE UP!
 

There has been a lot of debate lately about whether or not Oddworld is really dead. People keep repeating optimistic things that Lorne was saying about how they are going to move into new media and we are still going to get our Oddworld fix. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't buy it. Oddworld is done. Any attempt to move into t.v. and movies is going to be a fall on your face failure and this company will shut down completely. Now, I know I'm just asking for an immense amount of anger and flaming by saying this but we are just going to have to bite the bullet and accept this. Oddworld is dead. How many promises has Lorne kept to the fans in the last six years? They have been slowly abandoning everything that made Oddworld great. That is why sales have been so low. People lose interest real fast in lies and half truths. Where is Sligstorm? Where is Hand of Odd? Where is Squeeks Oddysee? Where is Munchs' Exxodus? For that matter, where is Munchs' Oddysee? Is anyone else tired of listening to whining about how the technology isn't up to the challenge? IT IS UP TO THE CHALLENGE, PUSSY! JUST BUCKLE DOWN AND DO IT! I give up. I've had it. Lorne Lanning can go cry on someone elses shoulder because mine is far too drenched to handle another excuse.

Computer generated movies with compelling stories and identifiable characters in a proven popular universe? You're right, that's a sure-fire failure at the box-office. (rolls eyes)

I agree, completely. Why did he say, 'The technology restricts ideas' when now games can be moulded into more than ever before? Gak! What an excuse...

I've been thinking this since April... It's all down the tubes.

i for one, am with the old man on this.
Angalok, your sarcasm is not misplaced, but i don`t think The Mighty Raisin has got the juice to pull this off.
Lanning seems to be a master of not saying anything concrete in his interviews. i know, he speaks all the words we want to hear, TV, Movies. Multi-Platform mumbo-jumbo, " I had a dream" stuff. An eloquent speaker, for sure, but as Tasty points out, his put-up or shut-up records stinks, those were all his dreams too.
For a company to leak to the media of a new product and a new publisher, and then in less than 30 days tell the same media, no all that is not goining to happen,in fact we are disbanding this operation, and moving to a new location and reinvent ourselves, to take new direction. This,to a business analyst, would most likely indicate a company in deep shit, not one fallowing a dream.
You can look in The Wall Street Journal and find many stories about other operations that have tried this type of move, sadly , you won`t find many success stories.
You can choose to believe what you want, but i would not hold my breath.

*ducks head, waits for Max *

That not possibly true Old and not so tastey. Lorne could make a come-back.(I sure hope he does.

I'll grant you that Lorne is the king of double-talk, and can give you an essay without actually relating any information. Personally, I think the whole problem with Oddworld is that they started the whole "setting up a fantasy universe" thing at the wrong end. Oddworld should have been a series of movies first, and games should have followed. Look at Star Wars video games; they all sell like hot-cakes, be they good or bad, simply because the movies have such a huge and fanatic audience. Oddworld should have built up an audience via film first, and sold games based upon that popularity, rather than trying to work from the ground up. Lanning for some reason did things the hard way, but I think he's going to get a second wind going for Oddworld through movies. The games have all had undeniable quality, disappointing sales figures aside, and they just need exposure and funding to convert more followers. A hit movie would get publishers throwing mad cash at the next Odd game.

Exactly, but look at some others I found that went the other way around and still made a success:

Super Mario Bros.
Donkey kong
Tron
And that's all i can think of for now.

Ah............ these are great movies?
i don`t think Mr. Lanning would apperciate being lumped in with these guys. ;)

Since when was there a Mario or Donkey Kong movie? And if there were an OW film, I bet it wouldn't be on the big screen. A short film, I would presume.



:spam: (Dipstikk, clear your inbox)

There was actually a Mario Bros. movie. Yoshi rocked! A little midget Tyrannosaurus.

Off topic: Inbox has been cleared some. Go ahead and message me.

Wait. PM me. "Message" sounds freaky in ways I'd rather not get into.

There was an actuall Donkey kong movie. look it up!

http://www.imdb.com/find?q=Donkey%20Kong;s=tt;site=aka

All I see is a buncha muncha video games and that crappolappy series they had a while back. No feature films, sorry.

Point proven right here.
http://www.movietome.com/movietome/s...rystal_Coconut

Ah. Velly good, Grasshoppa.

You win, I forgot about MovieTome.com.

I still have faith in Lorne Lanning...
Oddworld is going to come back, LL has the will to do so.

OMFG
This is a cut-rate video you get a the grocery for a buck!
If this is how The Mighty Raisin envisions his movie, stick a fork in OWI, it`s done.
As for the other titles you mention, keep in mind, they all had massive world-wide exposure from the ARCADE games, something OWI does not enjoy.
i am not trying to crush your dream, dude but the longer OWI goes without anything to maintain or expand it`s fan base, the less chance they have of get`n where they want to go. It`s THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE.

Look at these Forums, 3052 members, maybe 30 hardcore posters and 75 fringe contributors, not butt-kick`n numbers.
If not for a small group of "TRUE BELIVERS" like Xavier, Max the Mug and a few others where would this forum be?
And this with SW released a few months ago.

That could be, but if the movie had flopped would there have been any games?

God, i have even bummed myself out. :(

I have faith in Lorne. Munches Oddysee is made Sligstorm was abandaned for it didnt have a good storyline the Quintagy is Postponded while they make different Oddworld games and Hand on Odd will be next year in 2006. Dont go badmouthing Lorne he made promises and hes gonna stick to them!

No it won't. Hand of Odd will likely never surface, although it would be a cool PC game.

Such encouraging words from such a newbie.

Hand On Odd is being made and here are some pictures to prove it. Lorne doesnt break promises.
2006 come back to me and we will see who breaks promises.

Those pictures are all from when they were going to make Hand of Odd. It hasn't been worked on since before Munch's Oddysee or so, and right now the people who would have made it are disbanded. I wouldn't mind at all if it was made by 2006 but why are you so sure?
I'll leave the task of listing promises broken by Lorne to the next poster.

Black and White 2 (watch the videos..) is almost exactly how I imagined Hand of Odd, except slightly more industrial if you're evil. :p

Do you know how old those pictures are?
They were done before OWI stopped OHOO's production.

I just had an odd thought...

X-Box has an exclusive contract to the next few games made by OWI.

That will restrict sales, since it can only be on X-Box.
But what if OWI dissolves?

If the company is gone, and the contract declared void, what's to stop the team getting back together (all be it under a new name) and makeing non-oddworld games that fit the previous ideas for Hand of Odd, or any other game.

Of course, Abe, Munch, Stranger... and every other trademark would be gone, but the core of the games (the game-play, graphics, concepts) would still be there.

Could this all be a master-plan to become dyverse on the 3 consols and PC?

That contract allready has been ended, since Stranger was planned to be on PS2 too by EA.

Dude, Hand Of Odd was being made in the 90's and was in development while Munch's Oddysey was. It's not in development now, and it's not gonna come out in 2006.

Plus, it's the Oddworld Quintology, not Quintagy.

EDIT: After looking at those pictures, 2 of the screenshots aren't even from Hand Of Odd. Nice try, though.

I agree with Abe16, cuz in a interview with lorne they talk 'bout why OI changing their style from games to movies. It's jus one of the reasons I guess, but take a look yerself. (I jus copied this from the site a while ago so a can't remember the name of the site, sorry) :( my thought is; if it doesn't go well with the movie/movies then i think Lorne Lanning and co will continue making Oddworld-games. anyway if they're goin ta be a movie about oddworld then we're pretty lucky, but if the movies not 'bout Oddworld and they're doing great, for the company i guess then we could say Oddworld's dead...

nearly all the inhabitants are working somewhere else, a very few workers remain in OWI.

if Lorne fails to make movies now, it won't be easy at all to go back to games since his group kinda exploded everywhere in the gameing industry.

Hey all...remember Lorne is Oddworld. Without Lorne there would be no Oddworld! The Oddworld Universe is his creation.

I don't think you all realize how difficult it is to make the kind of games Oddworld does in today's market. There will always be Oddworld games. Lorne is just focusing his energy on other media projects right now.

ya think so? Well in that case... I do hope yer right. It would be bad if there wasn't goin ta be any new Oddworld-games made:( anyway i guess we are all hoping that it'll be new games.

I disagree. We've read so much stuff relating to this exact problem over the years, and I think most people here respect Oddworld for sticking at it. Not many companies would.

I'm glad you said that.

Dear Alf's Assistant
 

There is some truth in what you say..but,
Without fans there would be no Oddworld...

atusiya's father ( in a state of chaos) ...

I was thinking, why did Lorne have to start Oddworld off as a game series? If he'd have done it the sane way, book or movie first, I'd probably be watching a quintology movie, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and then polishing it off with a Star Wars geekout at the local cineplex a few days from now. He went the game way, let his vision be compromised with Munch's Oddysee, and just took everyone's bullshit. After Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath I just don't think he has the sauce, the street cred, to pull off a movie. Period. Not even a movie that sucks.

You know someone else who is famous for supposed double-talk? Peter Molynuex (Or however you spell his last name). Know last time I checked, Peter was a pillar of gaming, what with Black & White, Fable, and the upcoming The Movies.

In short, I have faith in Oddworld.

Personally, I think it's great that OWI want to do work in the animated film media. I would definitely go and see the movie. :) However, what really worries me about this is that people that aren't die hard or even moderate fans of Oddworld will 1. Not know about the movie and therefore not go and see it, or 2. Not even care about seeing it just because it doesn't have a "Pixar" or "Disney" label on it. (Yes, I know that it's sad, but this is what American film goers base a good movie on most of the time, unfortunately. How did Pixar get its start? By getting a Disney label slapped on its movie. :( ) If the sales in the films/tv show (whichever comes first or both) are really weak, then how will OWI have enough money to go back and produce the great games that we all know and love? I'm not saying I don't have faith in OWI, but, truthfully, I don't have faith in America's movie-goers. :/ (I don't know about the movie-goers in other countries, though.) In my opinion, these movies are really a one-shot thing...I would hate to see what would happen if they didn't sell well-if that happens, then Oddworld could, in fact, be dead. :(

Lorne went the "game" route because of the potential he saw in the medium. Games are unlike any of these other media, such as film and novels, because there is a level of interactivity that draws the player in and really engages them. You can get many more hours of gameplay out of one story than you can get in a 2-hour long feature film, as well, so that is that much more time a person is spending on your story. The player struggles along with Abe (or any other character) and the games themselves are works of art. Just look at those backgrounds for AO and AE; they look like beautiful scenic paintings. You don't see that anymore.

Lorne and Sherry back in the day were quoted as saying how they wanted to make games that weren't "twinkies", or just pure, mindless entertainment. They wanted to make a different sort of game, one with a powerful message and a great storyline to tell, and they pulled it off beautifully. Munch's Oddysee would have been just as great, in my opinion, if they hadn't switched to Xbox and thus had to start over again and cut out a lot of features and such. This was also around the time when several members of OWI either left on their own or were laid off, we don't know which, so there was a shift in styles even from the PS2 version of MO and the one we got on the Xbox. Anywho, what I'm trying to get at is is that games WERE their primary focus. The games are the canon, in the way that the Star Wars movies are the canon.



They provided a place in games that will be sorely missed. They managed to subvert just about every gaming stereotype, create a lush world, and very unique and memorable characters that I could actually feel for, unlike most. They showed me that games could be something more than they currently are, and even though OWI has left, I still have to hope that creativity can thrive in the market of games. I think people will soon realize that depth of plot and character development as well as innovation is the wave of the future, rather than technological advancement. As an artist, I have to hope this. ;) It's a shame that there is now one less creative company showing people how it's done. I hope to hear more details of Lorne's projects in the near future.
(By the way, if anyone knows what the percentage of people who bought Oddworld games, particularly the first two, were female, I would love to know. I'm doing a final paper about this for class.)

Because they started work on the games before Toy Story, before there was a recognised market for CG movies and when costs would be way higher. It would have been unfeasable to create movies at the time so the made the games in order to develop a fanbase and IP to then transfer to the movies.

Yeah, it does make sense. I've often heard the phrase "sleeper hit" when Abe's Oddysee is brought up, but a platinum game is pretty awake. I really hope more Oddworld stuff is made but I just really don't see it happening. And the wait is going to kill me. I could be out of college before a movie drops or a game is released.

Maybe Lorne won't even continue oddworld in his first movie, maybe he'll try and build a fan base on the big screen than make an oddworld movie

I much doubt it, that jerk.

I understand some people arn't pacient and are growing up fast, and by the time oddworld do something, they'll to old or busy when thier adults, and thinking that they've wasted thier teenage life when they time spare and to have fun. No offence to the 70% of the world population.

But just... I don't know. Well give up now untill oddworld come back (which will be about six months time, untill we get the new news that is, I mean proper news)