Former Brash CCO Becomes Oddworld Inhabitants President

Larry Shapiro, former chief creative officer of movie license-oriented game publisher Brash Entertainment, has joined cross-media firm Oddworld Inhabitants to serve as president, according to a post on Variety's The Cut Scene blog. Lorne Lanning, who co-founded Oddworld Inhabitants in 1994 and directed the its Oddworld series of adventure games, will step down as president to refocus his duties on the creative side. Three years ago, Lanning angled the company away from traditional game development to focus on an arguably more vague cross-medium strategy, including a prospective movie/game combination called Citizen Siege that didn't end up resulting in a product. "No one is more in stride with us than Larry. We both see the same future landscape," said Lanning, according to the Cut Scene report. "It's a petty radical departure from the contemporary landscape. While we think there's a number of barriers to break through, we think there are tremendous opportunities on the other side of the barrier." Prior to his role at Brash, Shapiro worked with Oddworld as an agent with Creative Artists Agency. Shapiro left Brash earlier this year, as the relatively young company has seen lackluster sales figures and recent layoffs overshadow its considerable early funding. Oddworld has not announced the nature of its current projects -- though Shapiro did note optimistically: "We intend to break the model of where games are today in a unique and entertaining way."