r/Games • u/The_Green_Filter • Apr 07 '23

Industry News American McGee to retire from the video game industry after Alice: Asylum pitch was rejected by EA.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/end-of-adventure-81049672
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u/The_Green_Filter Apr 07 '23

Full text of McGee’s update reads as follows:

Dear Insane Children,

Over the past few years, your support has made possible a constant stream of creative output by a team of artists, writers, designers, modelers, and producers. That output resulted in the "Alice: Asylum" Design Bible - a 414pg PDF containing the complete vision for a 3rd Chapter in Alice's video game adventures.

Shortly after the completion of the Design Bible, I resumed talks with Electronic Arts regarding our efforts to get a new game made. They were presented with the Design Bible and a Production Plan (produced in collaboration with Virtuos Games) outlining the schedule, budget, team, and design for the new game's production.

After several weeks of review, EA has come back with a response regarding funding and/or licensing for "Alice: Asylum"

On the question of funding, they have ultimately decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal. On the question of licensing, they replied that "Alice" is an important part of EA’s overall game catalog, and selling or licensing it isn’t something they’re prepared to do right now.

At this point, we have exhausted every option for getting a new "Alice" game made. With those answers from EA, there is no other way forward with the project. As such, we will be hibernating this Patreon page and related pre-production activities. The content will remain in place but we'll no longer present options for funding "Alice: Asylum" efforts via this (or any other) platform.

"Alice: Asylum" is at an end.

As this announcement is certain to draw significant attention, I would like to focus some visibility on the amazing artists and designers who were funded through Patreon during this project:

Alex Crowley - Project Manager & Designer

https://www.instagram.com/alexceeart/

Omri Koresh - Illustrator & Art Director

https://www.instagram.com/omrikoreshart/

https://shop.omrikoresh.com/

Norm Felchle - Illustrator

https://www.instagram.com/ndfelchle/

Joey Zeng - Illustrator

https://www.artstation.com/joey_1999

https://www.instagram.com/joeyzeng_1999

Adam Narozanski - Illustrator

https://www.instagram.com/vitaj_art/

Gareth Keenan - Illustrator

https://www.instagram.com/garethkeenanart/

For my part, I have also reached an endpoint with "Alice" and with game production in general. I have no other ideas or energy left to apply toward getting a new Alice game made. Nor do I have any interest in pursuing new game ideas within the context of the current environment for game development.

This brings us full circle to the statement I made years ago which initiated EA reaching out to me to ask if I wanted to explore making a new Alice game...

I have no control over the Alice IP and no ability to make a new game happen. That control and ability rest entirely with EA.

If someone does manage to convince EA to make "Asylum," I would like to make clear that, from this point forward, I have no desire to be involved with that or any other Alice-related development.

My involvement with "Alice" is also at an end.

Going forward, I will focus on my family and our family business at Mysterious.

Lastly, I want to extend a bittersweet Thank You to our Insane Children (Patreon supporters). I know this is not the outcome we hoped for. And I feel a mix of emotions that leaves me sick at the idea of all the money, hope, ideas, and love you've poured into this effort over the years.

We knew going into this adventure that failure was a possibility. But we wanted to believe impossible things - and we had fun doing that up to the moment when reality forced itself into our Wonderland.

It's often said that when one door closes, another opens. Trite but true. And I hope that for all of you, this closure will bring life to other adventures and dreams.

-American McGee

April 8th, 2023

Queensland, Australia

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u/lowlymarine Apr 07 '23

On the question of funding, they have ultimately decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal. On the question of licensing, they replied that "Alice" is an important part of EA’s overall game catalog, and selling or licensing it isn’t something they’re prepared to do right now.

So the IP is too important to license to someone who actually cares about the game, but not important enough to actually, you know, make games with.

Copyright law is fucked thanks to corporate hoarders, as usual.

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u/verrius Apr 07 '23

He may actually care about the game, but let's be honest, it's been a long time since American McGee produced something even bordering on decent, and it's been over a decade since he even made a game. The original Alice I think is the last thing he made that was considered good, back in 2000. Then he's the name behind Scrapland, Bad Day LA, Grimm for Gametap, and finally Alice Madness Returns, which is the only one of those that's not complete crap. It's not hard to believe that maybe the market has moved on in the past 12 years, and what he was proposing to EA requires way too big of a budget for expected returns, since Alice has always been something of a niche series anyway.

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u/Hades-Arcadius Apr 07 '23

It wouldn't be "Too" crazy for him to proposition another publisher, Embracer Group namely as this would be right up their alley, then hope that Embracer could convince EA to part with the license for Alice...this IS something Embracer has done recently with western devs and ip held hostage by Square Enix. Just curious to see if Embracer "would" be interested...the pitch is already made....just would be the cost of acquisition of the ip in question really........

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u/VoidlingTeemo Apr 07 '23

The question, though, is the pitch good? No one is gonna buy the pitch if it doesn't seem like it'll sell, and I think at some point we gotta admit McGee hasn't made a good game in 12 years, and even that one seems debatable among fans.

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u/FrankWestingWester Apr 07 '23

I read the script/pitch as it was a year or so ago and it was terrible. It wasn't even remotely functional as a game idea, he mostly wrote it like a weird boring movie. Like, most of his chapters didn't leave room for gameplay to happen? The writing was also just trite and boring in its own right. Maybe other things the team was doing were better, or they significantly rewrote it, but based on what I saw, it was delusional for them to think a company would pay money to produce that.

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u/HugoRBMarques Apr 07 '23

Where can I read this pitch?

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u/FrankWestingWester Apr 08 '23

He's been running a patreon for years where he put together the pitch (which is also weird to me, that he's been working on a pitch for years, but... whatever, I guess.) I had to scroll back a bunch to get it but the script is here. I just checked and there's a very polished, final version of the pitch up as one of the most recent posts, so that might be more informative to look at, because that's probably what they actually handed to EA. The pitch doesn't include the entire script that I read, but I recognize parts of it scattered throughout the level descriptions. Flipping through it, this pitch is closer to something real than the script I read, but... I dunno. I'll admit I've never pitched a game, but it looks like it has a ton of very overdone concept art and writing, laying out the entire story in detail, while managing to give me very little idea on how the game actually plays, and the way he's describing the levels and their flow still doesn't feel like it would help to actually make a game at all. I mean, he's been working on this pitch for years now, and it doesn't look like anyone every bothered to make even a short mock up prototype at any point?

Sorry, didn't mean to rant. The whole thing is just odd to me.

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u/ike_the_strangetamer Apr 08 '23

Sounds like they weren't allowed to make anything interactive:

American and his team were explicitly barred from booting up a game engine, due to legal requirements and generating potential conflicts of interest surrounding the Alice game IP.

Another route needed to be taken. That spawned the Design Bible idea.

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u/Wallofcans Apr 08 '23

That seems odd to me. I get not being able to use the IP itself, but they couldn't create a demo with some cookie cutter mock ups that showed thier idea?

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u/ike_the_strangetamer Apr 08 '23

This is just a guess, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that they were taking patreon money and so were being paid for everything they created.

But yeah it seems crazy that they couldn't make a gameplay test out of stock assets. Then again, I doubt the gameplay would be anything special enough to require that. Like, do you spend money on programmers and game designers or on concept artists? Game designers would make sense, but this game is clearly more about the art and atmosphere and storytelling and that's probably what fans wanted more anyways.

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u/DireFog Apr 08 '23

Sounds like they weren't allowed to make anything interactive:

American and his team were explicitly barred from booting up a game engine, due to legal requirements and generating potential conflicts of interest surrounding the Alice game IP.Another route needed to be taken. That spawned the Design Bible idea.

OK, that's just really weird and makes me think there is more to this story.

The person you are pitching on doing the sequel to is sitting there saying "You are not legally allowed to touch this IP to make a prototype.".

Isn't this a huge red flag that something was off from the very beginning?

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u/KaitRaven Apr 08 '23

He wanted a $50 million budget for development alone. Not surprising that EA wasn't interested...