The Oddworld series, while not the most popular set of games, is regarded by those familiar with it as having some of the greatest platformers of all time. Its developer, Oddworld Inhabitants, has been with it from the start (handheld adaptations notwithstanding), which at least these days, seems like an ever-increasing rarity. While they've been kind of in the dark the last few years, they've been up to some things recently; aside from movie-related projects, Oddworld has been getting quite a bit of attention.
The first two games in the series -- Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus -- were recently released to content delivery service Steam, as well as the DRM-free Good Old Games (GOG). And in what appears to be some very related news, they're working on something new for the franchise (more on that later).
Co-founder and creative director Lorne Lanning has been about lately, doing interviews. With Gamasutra he discussed the decision to bring the games to the online services, why digital distribution is great, and other fun stuff. An excerpt:
Why go with Steam and GOG at this stage?
We’ve long been big believers in the digital distribution promise, but only with Steam did we see the manifestation offered through a model that worked best for us.
The “us" in our case is passionate creators that own their own IP and are looking for reasonably fair terms in getting to the customer. Comparatively, it’s night and day from the retail environment.
When you compare the cost of digital distribution to conventional channels, it’s a hard decision not to make. It's also obvious to us that people will be buying games at the same place they are increasingly buying the rest of the consumer goods in their lives -- which is, of course, on the internet.
We have all come to expect that whatever we want can be bought easily through the internet, so anything that is selling outside of the internet is often through an old-school -- and soon to be outdated -- model. Physical distribution is endangered for many reasons, but most importantly, the cost of bringing physical goods to physical locations is killing it at the moment.
Moreover, Lanning says it cost them next to nothing to get the games on Steam and GOG, and yet with "zero dollars in marketing, zero advertising, zero manufacturing, and zero licensing fees to console manufactures, we are happy with the sales." What's not to love?
As for new stuff, he says "while it's taken us a while, we’re also working on something new for Oddworld. We still don’t want to get into any details on at this time but from my previous answers you’ll likely have an idea for where all this is heading." User HampsterStyle on the GOG forums offers:
"If I'm not mistaken Lanning had hinted on a forum somewhere that if the digital downloads sold well they might consider PC ports of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee to offer through digital distribution as well." Yes please.
And by the sounds of it, they're working on something altogether fresh as well:
"We're open to exploring how to best maximize our existing library, but haven't been focused on creating huge story games with 40 hours of linear gameplay recently.
We’ve been focused on a slightly different chemistry that we believe will prove appealing to gamers and Oddworld fans alike, but it's a big risk because it's way outside the box.
And that excites us. In some ways it will be very alien to Western gaming, but it's in this direction that we believe the excitement will be. Hopefully, not too much longer."
For more Abe, check out GOG's feature on the first title, essentially a development retrospective with Lanning. Expect one for Exoddus in the coming days.
