Lorne Lanning, the father of Oddworld, believes that Electronic Arts is to blame for Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath’s original retail failure back in 2005. Lanning accused EA for not putting enough marketing muscle behind the title, leaving it to languish in obscurity.
"Stranger was a major achievement. I'm thrilled EA did such a crappy job distributing it back in the day. It's a title that hasn't been exposed to the world,” Lanning told Eurogamer. "My personal feeling is Stranger was the best game we ever made.”
"It was sabotaged. When you see a big game coming out, just ask what the marketing budget is. If you decide as a publisher not to give it a marketing budget, you decide its fate,” he added. "As soon as we understood there was no marketing budget, we had zero expectations. We had zero incentive to build another game for them, either.”
"In the case of Stranger, it didn't perform because it wasn't exposed and it wasn't distributed and there wasn't the number of factors that go to what you need to have success on the shelf today as a boxed product."
Could Stranger’s Wrath have been the blockbuster Lanning expected? The game is being remade by Just Add Water for an HD rerelease for PlayStation 3 this summer. The Xbox 360 version is still under discussion. Lanning believes the Oddworld series is experiencing a revitalization thanks to digital distribution.
"Abe on PSN sold hundreds of thousands of units last year. No marketing. No advertising. Just people telling their kids to play it, saying, 'I played this when I was a kid. I loved this game. I want you to play it here.' There's a whole new generation of people who are picking up on that. I see that's going to happen with Stranger, too. That's just a question of us making sure it's on the right platforms,” said Lanning.
"On the digital distribution landscape, when that game is offered at a much lower price on the PlayStation 3, people will really enjoy it. It'll get this second wind of life, where it will be easily accessible and not governed by if Wal-Mart decided to stock it or not,” he quipped. "Anyone who wants it can log on and get it. If you have a PSN account you'll be able to get it. That's a huge game changer."
