Lorne Lanning: GameCity Keynote part 1
(Apologies for several things: None of this GameCity stuff is going to be in chronological order. I’m just grabbing time to post the juiciest stuff at the moment. Richard Jacques was amazing, but I wnat to edit the images first. The photography for this post is especially crap, as I was concentrating on note taking and just pointing my camera pretty randomly over the seating to record slides. Lastly, this is part 1 of 2, because GameCity starts again in 40 minutes).
Here’s a rough transcript of Lorne’s talk, given in screen 1 of the Broadway Cinema, Nottingham. Not only will I be paraphrasing, but downright summarising in parts; no time to take more detailed notes. He dealt with three main concepts: His politics, convergence of game and film art assets, and the cultural significance of games. He began by talking about his family, and quoted something his grandma said to him:
“God gave you eyes to see the world for yourself. So never let anyone tell you what you can see, what you cannot see, or what to think of what you do see”.
News was of higher quality in America during my childhood, because there wasn’t the assault on investigative journalism there is nowadays. Imagery from Vietnam affected me deeply at this time, epecially in comparison to my toys: G.I. Joes. That coupled with my family having a long line of veterans in it made me wonder why the accessories for G.I. Joes didn’t include wheelchairs, whiskey bottles and joints.
(Fragment missing here)
In seeking criticism of my work once, I was told: “Your technical abilities are fine… you just don’t have any ideas”. It was a revelation. I began to bring my cares to my craft.
Slide: The work of a photographer (missed name, Marshall something), showing the clothes of Hiroshima victims burned into them by the blast.
Their clothes literally became part of them. It’s crazy that if the same things happened nowadays people would have logos and brand names burned indelibly into their bodies.
I realised the immense value of George Orwell, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields, etc. George Lucas “gave people a spiritual alternative” with modern mythology. (Slide: Student in front of tanks at Tiananmen Square, captioned “Power of one… could inspire the world”). Media is deeply relevant: the news just gives us shock and awe, but people like Jim Henson can take some socks and teach kids to read.
However, even our loftiest and most worthy aspirations can be boiled down to a brand and exploited (Slide of cigarettes named “Peace” and “Hope”).
In the US, it’s now illegal to show the coffins of soldiers killed at war in the media. I’d like to quote from Brave New World, it’s a really powerful book: “Involved a nation so entranced by diversion seeking that its people voluntarily gave up democracy in favour of sucking the pacifier of non-stop entertainment.”
In that kind of environment, it’s no wonder more people voted for Kelly Clarkson on American Idol than for George W. Bush in the last Presidential election. He then quoted Einstein: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”
I was looking at characters like Kermit the Frog and Yoda with my wife Sherry, and said “If we really had any balls, this is the kind of thing we’d do”. I wanted to go for the same kind of meaning, instead of selling coca-cola to kids (He worked in advertising).
So we founded Oddworld Inhabitants together in 1994. Our objectives: Birth relevant inspirational properties. Empathy over aggression. Amortise digital databases. Transcend mediums.
I was very interested in the unequal global distribution of wealth, and the plight the poor. Nature too: “Call me a treehugger or whatever, but I like nature. I never left that part of my childhood behind” (Slide of forest, tree frog, clear cutting). This rainforest is being clear cut to make sure that this kid can get a Happy Meal wherever he goes in the world.
Advertising with cartoon animals is absolutely crazy compared to the reality of battery farms, etc. This kind of media is like junk food; you can get something really sugary and it might taste great, but as soon as you’ve finished it all, urgh… there’s just no substance there. Yet movies like Apocalypse Now and Schindler’s List have a really deep effect.
This is where what we wanted to do with Abe comes in.
Slide: “What’s your target demographic?” at top.
Slide: Same as above, but with picture of the Earth underneath (Laughter).
Here’s the mass market: A man has one simple switch, and women tend to deal with things in a vastly more complex way. Games are very like this. You can sit a man in front of a game, and he’ll ask “So what do I do?” and you say “Blow the shit out of everything” and he’ll be like “Great”. Sit a woman in front of the same game and tell her the same thing, and she’ll ask “Why?”.
The objectives for OI mentioned earlier allow us to pursue a wider demographic. In order to make games relevant, we need to feel for characters and their plight.
In making Abe’s Oddysee, we wanted to see if we could change “aggression = violence” to “empathy = violence”, and it had a karma system in place. If you went around killing everything, you got a different ending. Gamers were put out at this, saying “If you put all that effort into completing a game you should get the good ending” and Oddworld Inhabitants position was basically “No. Your actions have consequences”.
We consider it successful because we heard of someone who started killing Mudokons, and their five year old walked over to the game console and unplugged it.
We’re always focussed on the little guys, who look inside and become something much more. That’s really important to us.
(At this point, he showed two video compilations from Stranger’s Wrath. The first was by Oddworld Inhabitants, and was extremely character driven, showing them in moments of doubt, weakness, and extreme adversity. It built a real sense of drama. He then showed the EA showreel, which took bits of the same footage but excised all of the drama that didn’t align with typical alpha male imagery, and replaced it with footage of combat. The latter was utterly flat, and typical).
The world is being reduced to soundbites, and I see this as cost versus innovation. There are a few challenges in relation to this:
- Press now focus on known brands – “we print what our players want”
- Publisher ad spend – favors pre-awareness (sequels)
- Games became packaged goods before they were recognised as a valid medium of expression
- Cost more to market – audience unfamiliar with brand
- New play styles challenged by “quick demo” (People need familiar play styles to get into games and lead them into new play styles) [<--- It's MAYA again]
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That’s the end of part 1, as it’s all I have time to do right now. I started typing at 4, but was attacked by the dreaded 2 hour blink. Edit: Continues in part 2.