 His idea was for the theme of Oddworld to be "heavily woven with the dark side of globalization, the dark side of the multi-national fallout upon the human condition" and for his games to touch on examples of those themes, in the case of "Abe's Oddysee", capitalism, third-world exploitation, the environment and the fast food industry with respect to the plight of the diamond miners in South Africa and the De Beers cartel that dominate diamond trading.Lanning disliked "what [capitalism] did to the little guy," and "wanted to create a meaningful dark reflection of our dysfunctional world, wrapped up in a fantasy world, where we could talk about the craziness of our capitalism, but with a funny bone approach.