Designing Games that Stand the Test of Time, with Lorne Lanning Part 1 of 2

Jordan: 00:00

You're listening to Playmakers episode four. On every episode, I interview a game industry expert and I dive into their area of expertise to come away with nuggets of useful information to help you get better at what you do and get a bigger, wider, rounder view of the game industry so that you have creative and business success this week.

We have the legendary Lorne Lanning, creator of Oddworld. It is an incredible, unbelievable interview. So good. I had to turn it into two parts. This is part one. You're listening to PlayMakers.

Hello, hello. This is Jordan, and you are listening to episode four. Obviously, last week was the launch week of the show, and I am very excited to say that it's going incredibly well. Thank you so much for what you're doing, for listening, downloading, subscribing, all that stuff. It makes a difference. The reviews are coming in. I love seeing that. Thank you. And I really appreciate it. Let me know how I can make it better. Just send me an email, jordan@brightblack.co and tell me what guests you want to have on, what topics you think need to be covered.

And I'm going to make it happen, to the best of my ability anyway. So, we have a new website. If you listened to the first three episodes, you might have gotten sick of hearing me say brightblack.co/playmakers. It's a bit of a mouthful. And now you don't have to worry about that anymore because you can just go to playmakers podcast.com-takes care of all of your Playmakers podcast needs. It's easy for me to say. It's easy for you to hear. Check it out. See what it looks like. So that's new. And with those bits of business out of the way, let's get into this week's episode. Epic interview with Lorne Lanning. So Lorne is to me, just an incredibly inspirational guy, his creative work, his success with the Oddworld franchise. It's still being played today. Talked about today, the remakes are coming out and they're doing great. And I think that just goes to show that Lorne has created something bigger than just a game. He's really created a world. And what's cool about this interview is we get into that stuff. So, the interview is really long. It's really dense. And I'll be up front with you. We cover a lot of topics that are not pure game industry stuff. He gets into some politics, FYI. And he also gets into a lot of personal stuff about what drives him to make games. The interview is really short. Pretty heavy, pretty dense, and I split it up into two parts.

Today, in part one, I would say the theme is what drives Lorne to make the games that he makes, his reasoning, his way of trying to have an impact on society through his work, and how, to him, art is a challenge to have something to say. And I'll tell you, that's had a big influence on me. We recorded the interview last year before Trump was elected, and so I've had a little time to think about it. And it certainly had an impact on me. And that's kind of what part one is about. And then in the second part, we talk about, "okay, so if you have this message, you have something you want to say, how do you actually get it out there in today's ecosystem? How do you get funding in a way that still lets you be independent?"

So that's coming up in part two of the interview. So again, this interview goes to some unusual places for an industry focused podcast, but I want you to come with us there, because on the other side, I came out more inspired to bring my message into my work. And I hope that you will too. So that is coming up, here is Lorne Lanning.

Lorne, I'm super excited to have you here. Thanks for coming on the show.

Lorne: 03:38

It's great to be here. It's good to see you again, Jordan. And, thanks for having me on.

Jordan: 03:42

What is really interesting to me about you in addition to your work is your business and how you run it. So as we talk about this. This podcast is really for people in the industry. With that in mind, I'd love to hear about how you made the transition from working as a director at Rhythm & Hues, and my assumption is that you're doing a lot of kinds of commercial and special effects work.

Lorne: 04:03

Yeah, that's what we were doing, and I was a visual effects director. Not a true director, in that respect. Visual effects supervisor, art director, and then down the chain, through the years. But yeah, so not a client director. Visual effects supervisor, yeah.

Jordan: 04:17

How did you go from that to the creator of Oddworld? That's really what I want to know.

Lorne: 04:21

Well, start off a little bit. My first life, professionally, was really in the fine art world. And that put me around a number of basically heavy intellectuals. In the New York scene, I was an assistant to who was my favorite artist in the world. And then I got to become his assistant.

Jordan: 04:38

Who's that?

Lorne: 04:38

That was Jack Goldstein. And he died. And I think 20, 206, I believe, suicide, but he was really hardcore intellectual, very interesting guy, very passionate guy, the artist, like truly, and I got to see a lot and hear a lot of sort of political analysis, various philosophies, contemporary art, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, things like that, that turned down to a different level of thinking than anything I had had in art school or learned in art history. The sort of views of the world and, getting around some of these heavy people were a little more like, "well, that's really interesting. You're painting your dragons and your guys with axes. But what do you care about in life? And how is that reflecting in your art? And what difference are you going to make? Are you impotent or not?" And it was really like that hardcore, right?

Jordan: 05:35

Like you were challenged by that.

Lorne: 05:36

Yeah, totally challenged. And I was like, "Hey, look at how I paint." And they're like, "that's nice. You paint just fine. Where's your ideas? And what are you really about?" And it was like "Huh?" And then I started to learn that the greatest art through the ages, whether it was poetry, novels, films, theater, various music, was people that were really talking about something else.

And the art was a vehicle to execute on that something else. It was a vehicle to get ideas out, and art through the ages has really been more of a catalyst for changes in thinking when you need it most. For example, when Joseph Campbell died, who was arguably the world's greatest expert on historical mythologies. When he died, he was kind of begging the artist to step up because politics had failed us, and it was basically saying there's no hope of change. Corporations had failed us. Institutions had failed us. All these things failed us, so where's the sanity? And we're caught up in a bunch of misinformation and misdirection and all these things were basically what we need to really survive seems to be lost and really that was kind of the artist's message through time if we go back to the very beginning cave art on the walls was often visualizing what they needed to survive.

So typically, we find cave art of the hunt right the hunt was something they would visualize at night In the fire because they needed that hunt to succeed if they were going to live through next week and so art was a catalyst for putting forth what we need as people to help us survive and really from the cave art from the beginning to today, Stanley Kubrick's movies, not Michael Bay's movies, which is really commerce, right?

So Michael Bay's Movies, we would say, well, that's commerce, it's entertainment, it's product. Whereas, Scorsese or Kubrick were really making art and using film as an art form. And what I mean by that is shining light on uncomfortable, inconvenient topics or inconvenient truths.

And, Kubrick, you could deconstruct at an amazing level for what, “was he really talking about? What was he really trying to show you? And why was it being undercover?” Some of the stuff he was talking about was so sensitive, he didn't want to get blacklisted, but he felt like these are the things that people need to learn, and this is why I'm making films. Because he was really bored with films. I mean, the guy was super genius.

But the point being is that, the idea of art is something that can shape consciousness, that can help give people direction. And we find it with our favorite songs, we find it in our favorite movies. What's your favorite movie?

Jordan: 08:12

It's funny because I saw your favorite movies while I was researching for this interview, and one of them is the one that I usually answer with, which is 2001.

Lorne: 08:20

There you go, right? Like, 2001 is so stacked with subtext and you can deconstruct that and figure out what he was talking about, what he was warning about and, reflecting on policies and all the deceptions and all these things. And it made you think for years to come. Like I still, I went back and watched 2001. It moved a little slow for the 21st century mind, but it was still like, "wow, these were fascinating ideas to contemplate" considering what was it? 69? That movie was made 68, 69, something like that. So, and then we had a lot of other movies made at that time that we've completely forgotten. And we forgot the week after we saw them. But then we have that film. And so now we're talking 69, 47 years later, and we're still talking about it. And that's the difference.

And so what differences do these things make? For example, the film Red Dawn, the producer of that movie said, we need a movie that makes America feel good about war again with that message. He was able to get a lot of military support for all the vehicles in the movies, and they gave it to him because they wanted a message that made Americans feel good about war again.

So if you look at entertainment media as a manipulative design, as a propaganda design, it's all around us all the time. And as I looked at it as basically a wannabe storyteller, Right? A wannabe storyteller A, who, B, didn't want to be poor. Right? Like, so I would say, "well, I really want to have this more noble sort of approach, but I'm not willing to be the guy who's out there in the picket lines and going to jail being poor because I grew up that way and it's not any fun."

you're looking at this in the: 1990

Jordan: 10:36

And it's very impressionable Mindshare as well.

Lorne: 10:38

Yes, because it's selective focus for a longer duration of time. And it's not a passive engagement, it's a concentrated engagement, right? Like, you're actually doing things versus watching the television where you're not. So, I was looking at that and I was like, "huh", to me, a term that I coined was like, how do we create more Trojan horse pop? And in this category, I would also put something like South Park or the Simpsons, meaning South Parks and the Simpsons probably to this day have had more intelligent reflection on the truths of what's going on in our world that are basically, we're not supposed to be talking about because it's not politically correct or it's not in favor at the moment.

But those shows have had more critical insight into our landscape of American happenings than most of the news, 60 Minutes and all these other plays combined have brought to the public, meaning I've watched Simpsons hundreds of times back when it was really interesting before it got watered down. And you're like, "how are they able to say this on TV? They're totally ripping apart truthfully what our political structure is." And the news isn't doing it.

Jordan: 11:46

I mean, South Park had Mohammed on. They had a cartoon of Mohammed on.

Lorne: 11:51

I mean, these guys are going for it, right? They really do. As I've heard another Jordan say, Jordan Greenhall, who created DivX, who's a real brilliant guy, he goes, well, South Park is trying to get you to stop watching. And they have yet to stop pulling out the plugs on how deep they'll descend to get you there, to talking turds, and we still watch. But the point is, that was what I would categorize more as Trojan horse pop. And the same with like, let's say, the Muppets.

Jordan: 12:17

So that's the term that you mentioned, coining is Trojan horse pop? I like that.

Lorne: 12:21

Yeah. It uses the pop channel to try and basically provide more nutritious value.

Jordan: 12:29

Spoonful of sugar kind of thing.

Lorne: 12:30

Yeah, so instead of a spoonful of sugar, maybe it's organically raised honey. You know what I mean? Rather than, what do they call it? Sucrose, corn derived sucrose, or the very, the various varieties that will all give you cancer. But the point being is like, "okay, well, people want to be entertained by this type of thing," and that is a form of escapism, but so was George Orwell's Animal Farm. It was a form of escapism or, 1984, it was a novel to read, right? But it had lasting impact on people to the degree that we now call terms that are totalitarian or wellian, right, from novels. Those weren't philosophy books, they were novels. And in some cases, Animal Farm novels for kids I read in elementary school.

So my point being is that the POP channel can be used to deliver more nutritious value. And what constitutes nutritious value? Well, probably, mindsets or ideas that serve humanity better or serve a healthier planet better rather than practices that make things worse. Now this kind of sounds kind of highfalutin and a little bit, outside of the business realm.

And you're asking me, what was driving it? This was really what was driving it for me because while I didn't want to be poor, at the same time I didn't want to do things I didn't believe in. And I had been doing plenty of that. Coca Cola polar bear commercials, cigarette commercials for South America, weapons defense programs for TRW, Star Wars stuff.

I participated, earned a living to learn skills, but I didn't believe in what I was doing. I didn't believe in trying to make snazzier, hotter Super Bowl class commercials to get kids to buy more soda, chemical water for a population that now is obese and is diabetic and increasingly lowering an IQ measurably decade to decade.

So, when I looked at that, "I was like, instead of just selling bullshit, how can we sell better ideas that might inspire people, give them some hope." When we look at this landscape today, it's so overwhelming to the individual. Most likely coming from a dysfunctional family, which most of us did, if you didn't, bless you, good for you. I did. Most of the people I know did. We're all damaged in slightly different ways. It's a pretty intimidating planet out there. And we're just overwhelmed with all these experts that basically threaten us not to compete or challenge their law of the land or the framework that they want to lay things into.

But a lot of that is not helping anyone. And what it does is it diminishes hope in the individual. And what I came to believe is hope is something that I wanted to base my stories around, like it's an endangered natural resource that we should be fostering more. So I wanted to create stories in the model of Trojan horse pop that started with a character who is most likely worse off than you, the player in life.

So instead of going, "Oh, I want to make the tougher Rambo" instead, I want to take the guy you last want to be the guy you really don't want to be. And then I want to create a course where we build empathy and we focus on empathy as a connection between that character. We take away the old game rules that said, if you fail X amount of times, you've failed completely. And we say, fail infinitely. As long as you're willing to try, you could succeed. Because that's how I felt life was. Life doesn't say you get three tries and then you're fucked and you're right in this categorized class of losers. You have the opportunity to keep on trying, right? But do we have the will and do we have the hope to even do that?

And watching, I knew a number of people that committed suicide, got caught up where there was really, dangerous, behaviors with crime and cultures that were embedded in that, or people that just lost themselves to drugs, like pretty extreme falling off the deep end. When you see that happen to good people, people that you know were good, had a chance, and if whatever reason gets lost in life, I was like, "wow, that's seven or approaching 7 billion people in the world."

And how many people are going through this dilemma? I mean, I grew up in lower middle class America, which is really a higher standard of living than almost. There are other billions of people on the planet. So how hard is this and how rare is this hope? Is this inspiration to find that basically, as a content experience, can make someone walk away and go, "You know what, that just empowered me a little bit in my own life. that gave me this or that extra push." Now, that sounds a little highfalutin.

Jordan: 17:16

No, actually I just wanted to say that it doesn't because I think, I personally, and I guarantee you a lot of people listening to this, who work in games, also, want that and are trying to figure out the right way to get there from wherever they are, and what they do in the industry. So I actually think this is great stuff.

Lorne: 17:35

But, it wasn't necessarily winning investors, right? "Oh yeah, let's change the world, make it a bigger place"- at what profit margin? That's life, right? So then we have to figure out how.

Jordan: 17:48

Nowadays it's like what multiple.

Lorne: 17:49

Yeah. I'm not a fan of capitalism, which the shallow minded can misrepresent of, "Oh, I get it, buy my product, but I don't believe in capitalism." It's like, it's a lot more complex than, and what I don't believe in is winner rake all which is exactly the model that we're looking at today. Look at anything. It's a duopoly system, right? You get to become a Monopoly as long as there's two of you and then you can crush pretty much everyone else in the world playing field and we deforest. just look at what the TPP was trying to pass recently. I don't know if you paid any attention to that. The new global trade that Obama is trying to slip in underneath the radar and make it illegal for people to know what it was before it passed. And then Greenpeace outed it.

Jordan: 18:33

I don't know too much about it.

Lorne: 18:34

There's just terrible stuff. I mean, nasty stuff, bad for everybody except international multinational corporations, but bad for the environment, bad for the consumer. It's just just bad stuff. It's all based on this growth model that has no room to say it has any other real interest, as long as it's legal.

And the model is, as you said, it's about multiples of return, right? Which is basically, we, as entrepreneurs, are borrowing money from the richest, let's say it's VCs or something, so we can go out and work our hardest and hopefully get a few pennies out of the back end as they make even more for doing even less. Which is the model. Yeah, I mean it is, right? Like, I've raised VC twice.

Jordan: 19:18

It seems like there's a lot less bootstrapping these days, but I don't know if that's real or just a perception.

Lorne: 19:24

I don't know either, and I think what I've learned is I don't want financing. And the reason is because I want to be able to make decisions, based on where I want to go. Fortunately enough that we've been able to do it, self financing for the last several years. But what that's done is it's removed investors out of the equation. They're saying, how do we get a 5X multiple? Or let's say, even if it's a publisher, and I'm not, I just want to be clear. I'm not saying this is bad. I'm just saying this the way it is. So if you're with a publisher who's a public company, your impression is probably about the same as mine, which is that they really need at least a 5X multiple. Pull on these high risk titles so that it makes up for the losers, and you get a grand slam out of it.

As self financed, we've looked at it and said, “well, how do we double? Can we double?” And there's not an investor on a planet that's going to pay for you. If you can return twice their investment.

Jordan: 20:14

which is wild. Cause it sounds amazing, right?

Lorne: 20:17

Doesn't it? And this is what I said, I was saying this, I was having this discussion with a senior vice president, a major publisher, manufacturer the other day. And I was saying, our model we shoot at conservatively, can we double? Cause if we can double, we can prosper a little and we can make more and we can stay employed, right? Like we can keep doing it, but if we can get investors, we have to be 5X. And now that's if it's a publishing model.

I'm not saying it's strictly that way because there are loans opening up to indie groups. Sony started that program. Microsoft has a bit of that program. Steam is even doing things like that more, so there's becoming more ways to get support to make things if you've got promise. But in general, if you're with VCs, they want 10x return, minimal. They're hoping for more of a hundred X return on a big payout, right?

If you're with publishers, they want a five X return, but if you're independent, can you get a two X return? And if you focus on that, which is what we focus on, we go, “can we double our money fairly reliably in the next couple of years?” And so because the business is so high risk, people go, “look, it's not worth it.” If you're going to risk that much money, you need much greater returns. High risk should equal greater returns. Basic investment portfolio management strategies, right?

Jordan: 21:31

Well, also VCs want to lend you lots of money. Like small amounts of money aren't even worth it. Giving somebody. So now you need to find an excuse to spend a ton of money.

Lorne: 21:41

It's kind of like Hollywood. Like Hollywood, if you made a movie for $10 million and it's unbelievable, they still are not going to put $100 million in marketing behind it because their mindset is you can't ever get those returns because it only costs $10 million to make. If you spent $100 million, it could be the same movie at the back end.

They’d be like, well, we spent $100 million. So, therefore, it can make a billion because we spent a $100 million. But if you only spent ten million, we would never market it beyond what its initial budget was. It's a mindset that keeps, sort of keeps a business as usual. But it's not necessarily, I've talked to the most successful producers in Hollywood that want to break that model.

But the studios are entrenched in it. And I kind of look at it the same way, which is, well, can we lower our expectations? Can we still deliver high quality products that the audience like, but can we lower our expectations? So we don't have to have huge rewards. We can have satisfactory rewards. And on that model, we can keep on building, which means we can keep a brand in the marketplace.

We can keep turning new generations onto that brand. And hopefully, we can do it with a frequency, which is something we've been kind of lame at because our frequency has been cut, our output frequency has been relatively low, especially in the last, well, I say in the last few years, it's been better, but for a window of about eight years, it was, it was nothing.

So can we do that? Can we build a business? And like I was saying to the executive, Hey, if you were told you can buy this house for 5 million and in two years, you can sell it for 10, would you do it? It's like, who wouldn't, right? But if it's a piece of software, the risk margin is too high. You don't want to get involved. So it's kind of like, “do you have the self confidence to treat it as, as you would a house investment?”

And that's kind of how I look at it. I go, okay, we're kind of putting it all on red because we don't have that many reserves. We do live a bit hand to mouth, but before we commit to financing a project, we actually have the money to do it. We don't want to be in a short change game of ourselves. And with that, then we try to deliver as soon as we can, high enough quality to be viable. And if that continues to build, then we can continue to build growth and growth, not just to make investors fatter, but just to make our property have more brand penetration in the world. And we can prosper from it and everyone evolves, prospers.

Jordan: 23:54

Are you looking for investors?

Lorne: 23:56

No. And the reason is because I get it. And I started off Oddworld with VC, went through that dance, we survived, it wasn't easy, and then we raised VC on another venture, we didn't succeed, but it was, it was very fascinating, it was a big learning curve, but what I realized I'm not fully compatible at, recently someone asked me to basically take on a role as a president/CEO of an entity that did have big investors.

I said, I'm just not interested. And they were like, why? And I was like, “because my purpose in life is not just to go make these people more money, regardless of quality, regardless of ethics, regardless of everything, except staying legal.” And you can be very unethical and stay legal. And we've seen plenty of that. And I'm sure you have too. And vice versa. So I just don't want to exist making rich fat guys fatter and being at their beck and call to be like, you need to get in there, you need to solve this problem. You risked our money, blah, blah, blah, blah, because it's not about losing their money. It's about making them enough, right? So we talked five X returns. You return two X, you're a loser. I mean, so you win, but you lose, right?

And I was like, my purpose in life is not just to try and make rich guys richer. And that's what you're doing when you're basically fueling a big stock of a big company that needs to move their bar so that their shareholders have better returns. And then you're living under that pressure basically as a general in a military. So let's just consider it like a military operation, right? You've been given a certain amount of money and your objective is you got to return with more right now, regardless of anything else at certain points. They don't really give a shit. They want to know if more is coming back. So if you need to kill the village, whatever it needs to be, you need to bring that back

Jordan: 25:44

Or you need a really good story. You need to have a story worth what they spent.

Lorne: 25:48

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I haven't found a solution as a lot of scientists, friends of mine have said, and some of them are absolutely at the top of the class on the planet. And they'll say, “well, name me one corporation that's good for the planet.” I've been in a room with some pretty smart guys. No, one's come up with an answer yet naming one. Because they're all based on a model that has nothing to do with longevity and compatibility with us living on this planet.

And for me personally, having seen a lot of environmental destruction, toxicity, pollution, species die off, acid rain, the lakes in New England. I saw all these things as a kid and it really affected me deeply because I found my peace, peace of mind and all in nature. And I saw it just being, basically obliterated, which was again, reducing your hope in the future, things like that.

I think a lot of kids deal with today as a crisis. A lot of people across the board are dealing with a crisis today. The anxiety is higher than ever. Personal anxiety is higher than ever. Antidepressants are higher than ever. Depression is higher than ever. I mean, we're just even, depression is higher measurably than it was in World War II.

Like, this is the crazy, craziest kind of stuff that we're living for, though. And so for me personally, it became about, “how can I do things that I can go to sleep at night, believing in what I do.” I believe that people who build things and invest their time and energy and money deserve a return. I don't believe that they should be able to rule the world like Monsanto does, right?

This is my issue with capitalism, which is, basically we have, well, it's better than communism, which is a pretty retarded discussion, right? That's like saying there's God, there's no God, but we can't have any intelligent discussion in between what might be driving our universe and reality. Not to get too out there. But my point being, is-I want to go to be able to go home and feel good about what I do each day. I don't want to just take the money. And I did that to build skills. But I think we as individuals are catalysts for possible change in a myriad of different possibilities. I met a guy who had come out of Africa and He had a book that was published and he became like a UN representative, all kinds of stuff. It was called Find a Tree. He was just like, “it's crazy that these kids aren't learning how to read in Africa. And we didn't have budgets for schools and stuff like this.”

So he just said one day, he goes, “I'm going to teach these kids how to read.” So what he did was he found a tree because it was in the shade. Brought the local kids from the villages around and they learned how to read and then they got really excited and things started happening because of all the compounding benefits.

And then people were asking, “well, how do we do this? How do we get the money for school?” He goes, “you don't need the money for school. You need to find a tree.” Like be the thing, do the thing, and this guy, like I said, eventually he was embraced by the UN, but that's where he began. And so when he went to sleep each night, he was making sure that he did things that made him sleep better, that gave him hope the next day that he could see some change effect as he continued to live his life and he felt like that he was giving back in some way. It wasn't like he was prosperous, but I think that urge is really in all of us. Now it might get stamped out through trauma or through events that make us cynical or lose hope,

Jordan: 28:59

Or through insecurity, I think, a lot as well.

Lorne: 29:01

Yeah. Self preservation, all these things shape us in different directions, but I think ultimately it's kind of like if we each walk down the street and pick up a piece of garbage a day. If we just did that, eventually we don't have garbage on the streets.

If we just agreed that if we each do this little piece, we'll have a better world. I'm not saying I'm a saint by any means, but I try to find the way to juggle business, art, and the things that I think I have the power to do and that's really like create experiences that people can engage. And you know we've gotten a number of fan letters from people that just stepped off they played our game and they stopped from committing suicide I mean stuff you would never ever get but it validated the format of here is a character caught in worse circumstances of you, but if you don't give up he didn't give up and he got here and if you don't give up, maybe you can, too.

That message got reiterated back, and I'm not saying we make therapy games, you know what I mean? Like, ours are on the action adventure shelf. Star Wars kind of saved me in a different way. Like, I was so fed up with all the bullshit religion stuff people were trying to push on me, this and that. When I heard Yoda, it was like, it became sort of a basis for my ideas of a connection to this planet, versus this deity or that deity. And I was like, that silly little hand puppet in that movie, Frank Oz's voice gave me more validation for what I always felt was true that no one else was saying that that I became an enormous fan of Star Wars.

And when you look at fan cultures, which is something I was studying in trying to create a property, and fan cultures, ones that were standing out, of course, it's like music, The Doors, Hendrix, The Beatles, Elvis, like these people, you can't separate them.

Jordan: 30:58

How did you study that? What did studying that look like?

Lorne: 31:00

Well, what I started doing was deconstructing. I was like, why does something like Star Trek, why is it able to create Trekkies? Right? And Trekkies are like, don't get in an argument with a Trekkie about why Star Trek's not good or why Gene Roddenberry was a crook or, like they'll, they'd take that shit really seriously.

Jordan: 31:19

Yeah. Even physics, right? I mean, you got to learn a lot of physics to be a Trekkie.

Lorne: 31:22

Yeah. Right? So, so what was it? Gene Roddenberry, they were all morality plays about greater possibilities. They were all void of racism. So, Star Trek was one of the first shows that had blacks portrayed in the show as equal participants, not as subclass. And in American media, that was new. And in fact, you can go back to Uhura. And, She was considering quitting Star Trek, just as an example, and she told that to Martin Luther King, and he said, “you can't, you absolutely can't do that,” and he broke down to her how that was the first role on American TV, where there was nothing about race, and she was there, and it was, there was nothing that separated her from any of those other people on the board being female, or being a minority in this country, and that was the first time on American media that it was ever being broadcast on a regular show.

At the same time we had Archie Bunker, if you think about where we were, right? So it was Martin Luther King and I heard her interview and she goes and and I didn't realize the role I was playing and I stayed with Star Trek to the end because I realized there was a different Importance there.

Jordan: 32:32

That's an amazing story.

Lorne: 32:33

Isn't it? And so Gene Roddenberry, it was a show that used the mind of a greater possibility of a greater human empathy, of exploration, of discovery, of fairness, of not stealing people's shit. Let's just not go into another planet and steal their shit the way that the United States would do in two seconds if it had the ability, just like we're doing in other countries in the world. We make an excuse, and we got to go act as saviors, and then we go steal their shit. That's what's going on. Not to get into it too deep, but this is the reality we're living in, and most people are seeing through it as time goes on more and more. So that's fan culture, right? So Roddenberry created Trekkies.

My wife's a big Trekkie, Sherry, CEO of Oddworld. But she's a big Trekkie because she loves the morality plays. She loved Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone has a hardcore fan base. They play it, I think they still play it on Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve, 24 hours a day. They do all the Twilight Zone episodes. That thing, that show's like 40 years old. How is it possible that people are still watching it today? In black and white, and they still get into it because of the morality plays, because it talked more about us as a species, and our faults, our catches, the seductions that entrap us, the id and the ego that entrap us, like their morality plays that came from a higher, kind of a higher place, their agenda was evolving humanity. So if you look at Gene Roddenberry, evolving humanity is a fair thing to say in the context of how we were shaping stuff. The same with the guy who was, who brought us, Twilight Zone.

Jordan: 34:07

Have you seen Black Mirror?

Lorne: 34:08

Oh, yes. That's a great one. Yeah. And there's only like five or six episodes.

Jordan: 34:12

There's like three seasons and each one only has a handful.

Lorne: 34:16

Yeah, the one where they're all in the workout room all the time.

Jordan: 34:18

Yes, I saw that one. I haven't seen them all yet, but I have seen that one.

Lorne: 34:21

Yeah, really cool, right? Really cool stuff. So these are really cool morality plays. And then you get into things like Star Wars. Star Wars was basically samurai monks in space. That's really what was going on, like noble spiritualist warriors defending the weakest of us, not using their power to steal and oppress and conquer, but using their power to be more human, to allow other people and places the ability to be free.

So When you looked at these things of fan culture, what they stuck to is there had to be for intelligent fan base. And, so I'm not saying, pop fan base like, Cabbage Patch Kids has its moment, or Pokemon Go has its moment. But to really have a lasting fan culture, you had to have more depth in your content to really make people connect to it, it had to be something kind of more noble than our average display.

Jordan: 35:24

Joss Whedon comes to mind as another guy who manages to do this.

Lorne: 35:28

Yeah, he's been doing his thing. What's his property?

Jordan: 35:33

Well, he had Buffy and then he had Firefly. People still talk about it, right? They're really stuck with people.

Lorne: 35:39

Yeah. And so, it kind of has to have a little bit more noble than what else is going on. And I don't mean that in a hokey way, but in an inspiring way. Like, it sets a better example, even if it does it by showing us the worst of things like Clockwork Orange.

Jordan: 35:54

Right. There's values there.

Lorne: 35:56

Yeah, so it has to have depth, the audience has to know that you're way ahead of them. That there's more in here, that it's an encryption code, that there's more going on than meets the surface of it. And we see these properties that we've mentioned, they last the test of time.

People like to decrypt and when you and I get attracted to them, something, let's say, Star Wars. And then we find out you're like, I liked Star Wars. I thought it was really cool to see Samurai Monks in space. I thought the shots just teleported me to other worlds. All that was wonderful. I was a kid. I thought it was great. Then Yoda comes in later episodes. Boom. All of a sudden it's like, “wow, this is really resonating with me now.” But what I didn't yet understand until years later was it was all inspired by the Joseph Campbell power myth series.

The power of myth, why we need myths, to have sort of a target to strive for, or to believe in, that keeps us, something that has integrity, right? That's healthy. And so, in studying fan cultures, you go, well, what does it take to get people to make tattoos of what they like, like that's a pretty big commitment, right?

I saw it with well one percent of bikers that have Harley Davidson tattoos, like that was the most hardcore guys walking around. I mean the one percent is like the outlaw bikers right hell's angels types and they got tattoos of consumer products on them. How do they feel about that? It's the last group, right? Make fun of that brand and see what happens to you with those guys. The girl with the Beatles lyrics tattooed onto her leg or arm, say something bad about the Beatles and see how far you get with her. Like they become defenders of something that holds a higher ideal that they want to share and believe in.

So for me, I was looking at that and I was going, “wow, why do I have such gravity to the properties that I've stuck to? What can I observe in the people that also have a real strong passion for certain entertainment properties?” And then as a storyteller, how do I, and this is where the wake up call being in your art world, how do I not just make cool stories that I like to look at, but really tap your own being for what you care about in the world, what you think is important, and maybe a little more of the world that we'd like to be living in rather than, the dysfunctionality we're all suffering through now.

So that was a big driver for me, which is like, I want to make money, I want to be successful, but I don't believe that we're doing the right things politically, I don't think we're doing the right things for the planet, I have hope, but I see these practices, they're just insane. I mean, they're actually just insane, and we could break it down why it's clinically psychopathic and insane, and not good for anybody except a very select few who's taking a big harvest and making the rest of us suffer downstream. So I was embedding that knowledge and things I was learning about the world, a lot of it environmental themes, a lot of it racism themes, a lot of it, basic oppression themes. I mean, let's look at today in the world.

Jordan: 38:53

I was just thinking about the intro to the original Oddworld and how much it resonates with what's happening in politics.

Lorne: 39:02

Well, that's exactly what I was getting at. And I thought that when we first came out with that game, people said, a lot of the reviewers said, well, though it's anti capitalistic, like that was a bad thing.“And then today, you know, New and Tasty comes out and they're going, how forecasting or how, wow, amazing, 20 years ago and yet it's so relevant to today.

y in Los Angeles in the early: 1990

They thought you were a conspiracy theorist, right? This is intelligent people with degrees from American universities had no idea what was happening in the world. No idea. Intelligent. Some of them Ivy League like, what are you talking about? We're not overpopulated. What are you talking about? That's not happening. So, you're saying these companies are just going to go burn down the world. What kind of idiot are you? And you're like, you-You are a moron and you're ignorant and you're righteous about it. So now you're slamming people who know something you don't know anything about because you find the idea so outlandish that you can't accept it because you're ignorant, which is basically a result of brainwashing because you've been led to believe that these happy face logos are happy places.

And that's why Oddworld, the consumer, is branding happy face logos, right? So I'm just saying, like, we could live in a landscape that is supposedly amongst the most educated in the world. Professionals that were working, making good money, sending their kids to private schools, and they were absolutely clueless about things that were going to affect their children's future in major ways. And that stunned me, and it was very frustrating, and I had learned to shut the hell up. Kubrick shut the hell up. He made films, but he never talks in the work. Yeah, it's in the work.

Jordan: 40:59

I also think of the theme of the individual against corporate interest or industrial interest or profit motive. Those are, if not eternal themes, they're at least, American themes. They're themes of the current kind of Economic paradigm so that not timeless, maybe forever in that sense, but there are timeless to our time, right? You know 20 years is nothing for that theme, right? That's a hundreds of years kind of thing.

Lorne: 41:26

Exactly. And unfortunately, what's happening is, if we look at the youth today, how much of it is watching the news? So these are success stories to me. How much is watching the news? Almost nobody. It's getting on their grandparents when watching the news. Their parents aren't even watching the news anymore because they get it's all bullshit. They get it's all on, 900 plus outlets in the United States, magazines, television stations, film studios. All of the media that most people receive, if it's not from independent sources on the internet, is owned by six corporations, period.

Jordan: 42:00

Not this podcast, though.

Lorne: 42:03

Not this podcast. See, free press, man. Real free press. But 20 years ago, they were talking about the conglomeration of media because it's all owned by 20 companies. It's a real problem. But you know what? Now that it's all owned by six, we don't have the argument anymore. So we don't hear the argument anymore, but if you remember in the 80s, the argument was emerging amongst the critical intellectual class.

Jordan: 42:26

I remember even five, 10 years ago, people were talking about it.

Lorne: 42:30

Yeah, not anymore. Cause you lose your job if you're on any of those outlets and talking about it, unless it's a controlled opposition outlet where you're supposed to be acting like organizations. I don't need to get into it, but there's a lot of things where opposition is controlled.

So for example, foundations to preserve the world's oceans, preserve this or that, if they want, find themselves in conflict with big plastics companies or something. What the plastics companies do is they basically invest in the foundation until they have the controlling interest, and then they control the board.

And then you'll find out that “Gee, what do you know? Plastics and the problem that they're creating in the ocean just don't show up in their annual reports about what's wrong with the ocean.” That's a fact, right? Now, that controlled opposition, I have a whole section on the counter over here, is one of those sections from about there to there. Is all propaganda, and population control, and the history of rewriting history.

Jordan: 43:30

This will only be audio for most people, so-sorry, Lorne just showed me a section of his library.

Lorne: 43:35

And it's so that's the propagation The large section of the library, by the way. And there's some like really shocking data there, right? So my point comes back to, it's a complicated world. We're embedded with misinformation from the top down. A lot of what's being promoted as science is pseudoscience. It's actually agenda is serving private interests. It's not real science. We know this now because we saw in the 20th century, we very clearly saw the chemical companies tried to do this back around the love canal.

If you remember in the 70s, all the people being poisoned, the chemical companies denying it, the baby birth defects. And finally, citizens had to come up and call it out. Love Canal was the beginning of the unraveling of the toxicity of the chemical companies. Then later we saw cigarette companies giving us science that says cigarettes aren't bad for you. We know that's all horseshit today. Now we've seen it. With the oil companies and we know, depending on what side of the political field you fall into, which I think is all bullshit, right? First left is all distraction for the chumps anyway. And what we see is that. Again, we saw the oil companies lying, faking science, pushing false science, paying universities and well known scientists to promote pseudoscience, claiming that there's no carbon impact, this, that, or the other thing.

And we're going to find out pharmaceuticals, the same thing, all the big industries. What people believe is science is actually being sold to them as science is actually pseudoscience, serving special interests. So we live in a landscape of lies and bullshit. So where do we find some, some grounding for ourselves, to get through the day, to get through life, to have ambition, to have hope.

And so for me, all that stuff, all that research just drives the content of the stories I want to create. So that hopefully they have life the way that Dr. Seuss content had life. My mother read it to me. If I had kids, I'd read it to my kids. I know people that have kids, they're reading the same stories again and again because they hold a certain legacy, you know. Orwell will be read until they exclude it from the school system.

Jordan: 45:46

I think the fact that you've had these successful remakes recently is a testament to that you're achieving what you're trying to do as far as that goes.

Lorne: 45:56

thanks. I think, and we have to be clear, right? Like, all of that is fine and good as long as it's good entertainment. Like, we gotta get real, documentaries sell less for a reason. People aren't interested. They want to escape.

Jordan: 46:12

I want to create things that matter to me and that share my point of view and that I feel good about. But I also think there's value in just pure pop. Because I love the way it brings people together. People of different backgrounds can enjoy the same thing and share it in a conversation even. It can be something that brings those people together. I think that's a great value. People who have horrible lives, personal lives, really dysfunctional families. Something that can take them away even if it doesn't offer much more. It's a great service.

Lorne: 46:43

Yeah. We could almost think of entertainment as the campfire. And originally the campfire brought the community together at night or whenever it was cold. And all you need to do is be cold and have a fire and you can see how well you can get along with people. You know what I mean? It brings you together and you sit there mesmerized by the fire and it's a catalyst to bring people together. So that's a great thing.

And I'm not saying that all people that create content should think about it this way. I'm really not having any judgment on other things except the poor practices that I'm judging. But if someone wants to make superficial games, if someone wants to do that, I don't care as long as it's not doing bad. And, personally, I'm not going to make games that heroicize war. It's not going to happen. Someone, “oh, would you do the next Call of Duty?” If I do, we'll be taking down the White House, right? We're not going to be going after, hunting brown people around on the planet and claiming that they're terrorists or something. Like enough of this already, right? Like that.

Jordan: 47:46

I understand that. I really do.

Lorne: 47:47

Yeah. like. I think it is a bit offensive that wars that are contemporary, that are extremely muddied with where is the real truth, are being turned into entertainment as parents are suffering the loss of kids, as people are suffering the loss of loved ones in it, it's instantly being turned into consumer entertainment, which I think it's just something I wouldn't want to participate in.

Jordan: 48:16

It's inevitable that it happens. It's inevitable. It's unfortunate that, a lot of times it doesn't really respect the realities of, I mean, we see the same thing in other kinds of media and film and so on, but we also all know the examples of the movies that do it better and do it right.

Lorne: 48:36

And they're harder. They're harder because it's not just about, “okay, did they laugh at this line?” It's like, are we staying true to what the idea is here? the general philosophy that's shaping this story in the first place or, the nugget of insight that it's trying to deliver. But anyway, so none of this is really that compatible with business, right?

Jordan: 48:57

There's a tension there for sure.

Lorne: 48:58

There's certainly a tension. And so my partner tells me this all the time. She goes, “Lorne, if you just wanted to make money, you could have done that in so many easier, different ways. You didn't have to try and burn both bridges, or build both bridges at the same time, I should say.”

Jordan: 49:12

Okay. So I'm going to kind of slice the interview right there. Call that sesh one and then session two with Lauren, we get into how do you have success today with your own IP starting from scratch? What does that look like? What does it take to succeed on Kickstarter is a big area we get into. And in the meantime, obviously Lauren brought up lots of different people, lots of different resources, games, designers, artists, films that were important to him, and those are all going to be on the blog at playmakerspodcast.com. You can contact me there, or I will see you in part two of this interview.