Of his relationship to Just Add Water, Lanning said it is best "to empower people with a sense of responsibility and trust [but] when we get on to new content, there's a whole other level of discretion that will go beyond that and then we'll see if they like working with me." Lanning has explained that his role is not down in the trenches with the developers anymore because the templates and mechanics of the gameplay are done, and he trusts the developers at Just Add Water to use them in the construction of the game, but his input increases when new gameplay mechanics are developed, such as Stranger's Wrath's live ammo, or when they get close to shipping and he needs to inspect game controls. When he compares the relationship with Just Add Water to those his company had with publishers in the past, he feels their development team has a culture that can be nurtured better because the pressure to succeed is only coming from themselves, not an outside force they can't control, such as a publisher's demands and the risk of blowing a huge budget on lukewarm sales returns. Gilray says Lanning and Sherry McKenna are in constant communication with him, which assures him they still care about their brand. Though ultimately, they would all be waiting to see how well "New 'n' Tasty!" performs before making a decision. Lanning revealed they require 500,000 units of "New 'n' Tasty!" to sell in order to fund a new game, but only 250,000 had been sold to fund a new version of "Exoddus", because he believes more money is spent on the research and development period in order to produce "new mechanics, getting something creative that's different," whereas a new version of "Exoddus" would use the mechanics and assets already created in the original game to use as a blueprint. Gilray said a committee begun working on the next game in the middle of summer, 2013. In February 2013, Stewart Gilray said the Just Add Water team had expanded to include 22 staff, of which "a few" are from the original Oddworld Inhabitants development team headed by Lanning between 1997 and 2005. Just Add Water has a "rough plan for the next couple of years", and now that their team has expanded with their budgets increased due to the success of their games, it is Gilray's intention to "bridge that gap between the traditional definition of "indie" and "AAA" projects". Lanning says he has not been this excited about gaming in over a decade because of the combination of exciting Triple-A titles on next-gen consoles, the wider, creative innovations on the indie front, and the revisiting of old genres like 2D platforming that were lost many years earlier getting a fresh look with newer technology.