A computer game becomes a film short that could be up for an Academy Award. I'm Fred Fishkin with Bootcamp, a report on computers and technology. They are the folks who created Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and now the sequel Abe's Exodus. Lorne Lanning is the president of Oddworld Inhabitants...where the focus has been on creating meaningful, rich story lines. There are some strange looking characters who face problems in a fantasy world that, says Lanning, mirror problems in the real world...

"As an example, in the first game, Abe's Oddysee, Abe was a slave laborer who worked in the meat processing plant of Rupture Farms and he thought he had a good job. He thought everything was fine. And then he found out that business wasn't good for Rupture Farms, so they decided that the next quarter, to make profits look better, they were going to just chop up the work force into a new line of tasty treats. And so the retirement plan was a lie and it was basically what we call Abe's fall from ignorance."

The game has sold over a million copies and now the story continues. And videos segments from the game that were put together for a film short, were submitted for an Academy Award...

"And now we're just going to wait and see. And in February, the nominations take place."

Lanning grew up, by the way, immersed in video games. His father was an engineer for ColecoVision.