This is from the purpose section of the wikipedia entry on Oddworld Inhabitants, the video game development company that created all the Oddworld video games. This is kinda lengthy but I really love it. It serves as a great example of why things like books, movies, music and video games are NOT(or at least are not necessarily)meaningless and shallow wastes of time. It also made me happy to know that the inspiration I got from this stuff(in terms of the way I think and the way I try to interact with people) didnt just come from my own heart or even just from God but also from the guys who actually made the games. By the way Lorne Lanning is the founder and original creative mind behind it. I dont agree with everything he says of course(if you look up Ephesians 6:12 youll have a pretty good idea of what Im talking about there but its a very minor point in this case), but overall this is a good read.... When Lanning was young, he felt lost and overwhelmed by what he saw was wrong with the world, as consumers were fed lies through television and newspapers. He grew up being programmed with information about nuclear submarines, global thermal nuclear war, visions of napalming during the Vietnam war on new colour televisions and the possibility of a new generation of people not dying of old age, at a time when he was just discovering mythologies such as Santa Claus. He stored an enormous amount of what he wanted to say concerning what was going on in the world about which the media was not forthcoming. And he felt that entertainers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Bob Dylan were helping to save the world through entertainment as a vector for information, which was when he discovered that the media most influential on public opinion were mass-produced and electronic. He was inspired by the influence of the media on his life: how Jim Henson and Sesame Street taught him to read where school had failed; how Dr. Seuss was able to create stories still being read to new generations that give people a better moral compass and healthier ways to look at the world; how George Orwell took his personal experiences during World War II to create stories designed to wake people up to the realities of the world around them; how George Lucass Star Wars could succeed where religion and philosophy were failing at a time of religious deficit in America, making him believe in the possibilities of entertainment for change. When Lanning was working with Sherry McKenna at Rhythm and Hues, his eyes were opened to the possibilities that the CG industry had to offer. While most in the industry were talking CG down, he correctly predicted its potential, watching Pixar become the most successful film studio in world history. He saw videos games in the same way, describing them as the pop of pop mediums, and wanted to get involved because of its potential to become the most successful medium and offer nutritious content. By nutritious, he meant that if video games were a part of the four main food groups, they would be in the junk food category, because theyre not used to get a degree or a job, theyre purely for pop entertainment. But Lanning believes that video games have the ability to become one of the nutritious food groups by offering useful content with a meaningful message and a psychic, spiritual value to users In categorizing a nutritious game, Lanning explained that they should involve vision, creativity and a richness to lift themselves out of the narrowing of options he was beginning to see. And when games start to embody more of the heart that we expect from classical forms of entertainment... more of the soul that we get from a great movie, such as stories with emotional depth, powerful character dilemmas and emotional engagement from the audience, the video game industry will expand exponentially. Lanning is first and foremost an artist, and as an artist, youre constantly trying to figure out how to integrate those things you care about in life in your medium of expression. And he found that video games were the perfect medium for combining the philosophies and realities hes observed in the world with the tools and technologies he loves, allowing him to repackage that content into a viable story for an audience with a meaningful message about what is really going on in the world – the Clif Bar instead of the potato chips. So he wanted to instil a morality in video games so that their message could give hope to the next generation of kids and make them feel less lost in the world. But he also wanted to weaponize the pop medium of video games to be used against the frauds in charge: “ It is peoples responsibility in the world today to stand up, and stop being pushovers, and get off your knees, and stop just taking these lies and bullshit that are screwing up our planet, that are screwing up your retirements funds, that are screwing up the value of your home, of your business... Look at what these people who claim to be running things are doing today, and these are frauds. So its always been in my opinion that its up to individuals that see differently, that believe they have an opinion that others might value, to stand up and speak up. And when we dont do that, we live in more of a world we dont like, we dont care for. When we do do that, we connect closer with people round us... It has always been about instead of just offering a nutritionless Snickers bar, that maybe it can have some vitamin value as well, and maybe that vitamin value is just a little bit of a shift in how we perceive things. —Lorne Lanning, GameCityNights [69] Unlike most video game development studios, Lanning and Sherry McKenna did not think of themselves as starting a business. Lanning likened Oddworld to a band making music, and he wanted to be the Pink Floyd of gaming as opposed to a Britney Spears – the insinuation being that I dont want to be told [by the publisher] what to make. I want to make the songs I want to make. And those were stories that convey deeper messages about what was really going on in the world, because the artists vision was more important than the industrys economic requirements, I didnt care about making any entertainment if its not going to be what I care about in life, and so to separate the two is something Im not interested in. He believed the only way to do so was to build a globally-recognized brand [and] wind up with the sort of integrity that might stay intact over the years. “ How do we embrace these things... genetically genesplicing in more intelligent messaging, more things that would wake up people, in ways that might affect their life in more positive ways? Because as a kid growing up, at a certain point in my life, I came to believe the most endangered natural resource that we have is hope, and to our youth, that’s it – hope. And for me, that was the hardest thing to find. And it took a while... How do we do what Orwell was doing, what Seuss was doing, and what Lucas had done – take these ideas that are so messed up we dont want to talk about them, and repackage them into a comedy of irony? And that was the birth of really the thinking of Oddworld. —Lorne Lanning, D.I.C.E. Europe 2013 Lanning has always believed that society is under the umbrella of massively deceptive campaigns to keep people ignorant, in fear, and unknowingly supportive of truly evil policies, and the dark humor possible in video games was his way of illustrating that truth. Particularly, setting his games on the fictional Oddworld allows him to get away with more than he would if the games were set on Earth. And using a metaphor in that way is how he disguises the message he is trying to send, because his partner Sherry McKenna explains that nobody wants to be preached to... you get up on a platform and tell people how the world should be, and they’ll walk away... but if you can grab their attention with irony and humour, then you’ve grabbed them. Lanning refers to this development philosophy as Trojan Horse pop. This strategy involves packaging meaningful messages deep and personal to his beliefs beneath the veil of an entertaining video game, in the way the Trojans hid deep within the bowels of the wooden horse from Virgils Aeneid. Hence his games touch on elements of slavery, globalization, food crisis and animal testing in an entertaining but thought-provoking game that doesnt preach to the gamers, yet still contains the messages for those willing to consume them. The challenge now was to do that in a free market society capitalistically driven on growth only, where games with artistic vision are considered too risky to the point of being suicidal industry decisions. Lannings original plan was for Oddworld Inhabitants to be a colossal transmedia endeavour, born of a visionary sense that interactive and non-interactive entertainment would at some point converge, assisted by evolving digital communications. [39] While it was to eventually encompass film and the online world, it would begin with video games because they could be a potentially powerful medium for telling great stories and because so much American mind share was devoted to video games at the time. But his intention was to own his properties and his creations forever, rather than follow the business expectation of licensing characters to the highest bidder. He saw iconic creations like Star Wars, Disney and Pixar, that became pied pipers of the most popular characters with noble causes, as a general practice... just becoming the brands on the worst quality health products for new generations... that are being pushed by the largest companies and marketed with misinformation about its unhealthiness Instead, Lanning wanted to create characters of high moral integrity and use them to enforce a new licensing model which involved only licensing to companies that use better practices for its employees and for the environment, because for creators, some things are more important than money. He also believes that video games have the power to have a profoundly positive effect on the planet. Right now, the purpose of games to make money and entertain is just the tip of the iceberg. But if video game developers were asked to make games that could: “teach kids physics by first grade, teach kids to read by this time, to help engineers better understand how the world works, and biologists and scientists understand by creating virtual worlds that dont necessarily have to turn a profit, but have to show improvement in cognitive skills and statistic benefits to society, if that happened tomorrow, what would gaming be like in ten years from now? And thats not even on the table. Its never up for discussion. Its not going to happen under the current way things work here. But we really are still looking at a medium thats just capable of completely kicking ass over all other mediums. —Lorne Lanning, EP Daily Lanning still believes that video games are suffering what has plagued all entertainment industries – an unbalanced ratio of Britney Spears-class content versus deeper Pink Floyd-like complexity. But he hopes the 21st century will continue the trend that storytellers like Shakespeare, Pink Floyd and his inspirations Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and HG Wells have used to create deeper more meaningful and relevant content that reflects the challenging issues happening in the world around them today. The obstacles preventing them from getting these more meaningful stories out to their audiences, according to Lanning, are money, means and the fear of soap box activism. Sales and marketing departments are more concerned with profit and less with meaningful stories. As a result, the big budget triple-A titles are least likely to risk their profits by releasing content with deeper meaning instead of with tried and true methods of success, because they work in an environment of investment versus returns dictated by the publishers providing the money they need to make the game. However, if developers can create games that are cheaper and with little or no investment from a publisher, they retain more creative influence on the end product and can then make a game with more meaningful content, instead of what will sell more units. But the danger of making games with these messages is the risk of alienating an often jaded userbase through activist ideals and making them feel like they are being dictated to by someone on a soap box, instead of entertained way video games have always done. But Lanning believes that the documentary filmmaking industry shows an evolving appetite for reflecting relevant truths that leave audiences with more lasting impressions and value to their lives, hence his method of Trojan Horse pop. And video games can do this the way music and film has, but only if it is led by the independent sector, because they dont have to guarantee high profit margins for investments coming from publishers. “When content is deeper and more meaningful, then you can still create highly digestible and widely consumable entertainment products. Or, you can make Britney Spears albums. The games industry has more Britney Spears-class content than Pink Floyd. We just always aimed to deliver more of the later [sic]. Great content lasts the test of time, big pop for the moment evaporates from the history books more quickly. —Lorne Lanning, Polygon
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 00:49:35 +0000
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