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EA Rejects Alice in Wonderland Threequel, Development on Asylum Ceases

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American McGee has been busy (since 2017) with the pre-production phase of his proposed follow up to 2011's Alice: Madness Returns. The third game in the series was going to be called Alice: Asylum, but after recent interactions with Electronic Arts McGee has admitted that: "Alice had a good run but the dream is over." McGee and a team of collaborators (artists, writers, designers, modelers and producers) have contributed to a massive Alice: Asylum Design Bible, and it was hoped that after many years of negotiations with EA, that the large chunk of presentation material would provide enough motivation for the publisher to sign up for a push into full development. The Alice: Asylum Design Bible was financed via fan contributions, through the Patreon crowd funding platform.

The publisher has decided to not finance the Asylum project, and will pursue other routes with the Alice intellectual property. McGee provided an update on the game's Patreon page: "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."



McGee concludes that the project is now at an end: "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." He proceeds to acknowledge key contributors to the project, and thanks them for their artistic and design contributions.

McGee also announces, with great frustration, his total retirement from games development: "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."


McGee has found recent financial success with the Mysterious range of plushies, so much so that he has managed to pay off debts with his former boss (at ID Software) John Carmack. It is refreshing to see that the pair are on good terms, given the torrid history between many original developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. McGee was fired by John Carmack in early 1998, due to the submission of (alleged to be) inadequate level designs intended for the - at the time - in-progress Quake III project. McGee has stated, decades later, that he did not receive an official explanation for his sacking from ID Software: "I was never told any solid reason for being fired. To this day, I still don't know. But I am willing to accept that it was a mix of reasons including internal politics and my own failings."

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Kind of a shame really; a lot of the initial work was basically crowdfunded for free for EA, yet they still didn't want to take up the offer but at the same time now know that the Alice IP is just valuable enough to not sell it. Even if it was just limited to a digital-only release, they should have spared some effort to test out the waters with crowdfunded work for owned IPs this way. Kind of like a modern outsourcing of initial game development to a passionate group that will do it justice and then doing the rest and taking a cut after.
 
I loved Alice: Madness Returns. :mad:
 
Both Madness Returns and the rest of McGee's own games, via Spicy Horse, left much to be desired. Hell, Spicy Horse went belly not so long ago. Perhaps it's for the best that Alice 3 got canned.
 
Now that i've settled down i was thinking...

Maybe it's better this way... EA doesn't get fame for a good game title this way, and they certainly wouldn't deserve it either. They don't even want to acknowldge the existance of American McGee's Alice, as they don't sell the complete edition of Alice: Madness Returns which had a 2011 remaster of the original game bundled with it.

They can choke on their dying Fifa and Battlefield series.
 
EA is a shit company, what a shock
 
The translation is not pretty to my language...
I can not understand. Does this mean that the task donation money is stolen after the task is not completed? Or are the donations returned to the donors? Pardon, "contributions"!
 
Hi,
Not sure why anyone would miss this, so good choice give whom ever pulled the plug a cigar :cool:
 
I don't remember much about A:MR, but what I do remember is that I enjoyed it very much.
 
" 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."

VG theses days ...
Some weeks ago, i've finished the Quake remaster, i was hooked by the number of people in Bethesda (and every big company) who aren't making games ...
financial, lawyers, etc ...
There is more lawyers now in the "team" than the complete original team of Quake !
 
Good thing Alice in Wonderland is public domain. Just rename the game and sell it to someone else.
 
Surely EA has plans for one of its studios to continue its development, Motive, Codemasters, Bioware, Respawn or DICE could be candidates in the future.
 
EA is a shit company, what a shock

EA voted Worst Company In America 2 years in a row 2012/2013. They were the first company that managed to achieve this distinction. lol
 
EA voted Worst Company In America 2 years in a row 2012/2013. They were the first company that managed to achieve this distinction. lol
Not bad, they should write it on the game boxes, would be a nice ad ...
Huuuu ... wait ....
 
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Surely EA has plans for one of its studios to continue its development, Motive, Codemasters, Bioware, Respawn or DICE could be candidates in the future.
Doubt it, they just keep IPs incase someone knocks on their door with a suitcase of money to buy them out.

Every IP is worth an X amount of money.
 
Alice MR is one of my all time favorites and i contributed for the development. A damn shame. I especially don't understand why couldn't they lease the IP if they don't want to do anything with it. Cun**.
 
Surely EA has plans for one of its studios to continue its development, Motive, Codemasters, Bioware, Respawn or DICE could be candidates in the future.

Doubt it, they just keep IPs incase someone knocks on their door with a suitcase of money to buy them out.

Every IP is worth an X amount of money.

Very much this. Its about owning the IP to stop the original creator from being able to take his work elsewhere and thus less competition from other publishers.
Im assuming that EA has all rights to the IP which means McGee has lost all control of it.

hindsight being 20/20. Maybe he should of negotiated a better contract with EA. A 'get out' clause that still left him with some rights to the IP just in case both parties decided to go their separate ways. So maybe he is partially at fault here.

I cant really be mad at him from retiring given the shitty state of the industry, Im sure EA being EA done him real dirty and its not unheard of for a small dev studio to get run into the ground by their publishing partner just so the publisher can swing in and buy them out for a jar of dirt from the ground.... I think T2i/2k or Rockstar did this to a studio around a year ago.

as for who works on future Alice games. It wouldnt be Codemasters or DICE, maybe not even Respawn. Top picks would probably be Motive and Bioware with maybe Respawn being in 3rd place since they have the most experience with the sort of genre.

---

Its sad... but life is shit and people are c**ts so buckle up.
 
No surprise. Looking at EA's recent releases, they are more into putting out games they can fill with microtransactions.

Not familiar with patreon, but I am just wondering now as the journey is over, will the 2.934 patreons get their cash back? On another note, I have to say the Plush Bunny is really sexy! :eek: Not sure if it's worth $45, but ey. Collectors tax. Dam, they got a whole collection of "Plushie Dreadfuls".

Bun_Loop_600px_Square_480x480.gif
 
Oh wow, I'd somehow completely missed that there was a sequel to America McGee's Alice, which I enjoyed immensely two decades ago.
For £2.99 that's an instabuy!
 
I understand I am casting my Raise Dead skill but something today had me meander to McGee's design bible and I remembered this thread. Figured I would post some context from his Patreon post:

And now some quick fire Q&A from American...

1) "Why not just buy the Alice license from EA?"

Because you cannot force someone to sell something they do not want to sell. EA has said "no" to any and all offers to purchase, license, or work with the "Alice" IP (intellectual property) - and as the legal owners of the property, it is their right to decide what to do with it.

2) "Why did you sell Alice to EA in the first place?"

American did not "sell" Alice to EA. EA owned it automatically from the start. American created the first "Alice" game while he was an employee of EA. As is the case with almost all such work situations, any creations or inventions made while employed by a company end up the property of that company automatically.

3) "Just create a different style of game based on Alice In Wonderland since it is public domain"

American signed an agreement with EA to never develop any new game or property based on "Alice in Wonderland" and he signed over his name in association with the version that he created while at EA. That means he's legally barred from doing anything related to "Alice in Wonderland" outside the realm of the property he created at EA.

4) "Go find another publisher" or "just Kickstart it" and similar suggestions

This does not solve the problem and just takes the questions back the #1 - it's EA's property and they do not desire to see it developed, licensed, funded by others, etc.


So hopefully this sheds some light on the thoughts of...

Even if it was just limited to a digital-only release, they should have spared some effort to test out the waters with crowdfunded work for owned IPs this way. Kind of like a modern outsourcing of initial game development to a passionate group that will do it justice and then doing the rest and taking a cut after.
Good thing Alice in Wonderland is public domain. Just rename the game and sell it to someone else.
Surely EA has plans for one of its studios to continue its development, Motive, Codemasters, Bioware, Respawn or DICE could be candidates in the future.
Alice MR is one of my all time favorites and i contributed for the development. A damn shame. I especially don't understand why couldn't they lease the IP if they don't want to do anything with it. Cun**.
Im assuming that EA has all rights to the IP which means McGee has lost all control of it.

hindsight being 20/20. Maybe he should of negotiated a better contract with EA. A 'get out' clause that still left him with some rights to the IP just in case both parties decided to go their separate ways. So maybe he is partially at fault here.
 
I understand I am casting my Raise Dead skill but something today had me meander to McGee's design bible and I remembered this thread. Figured I would post some context from his Patreon post:




So hopefully this sheds some light on the thoughts of...

I can understand No.2. Game was made while he was under the employment of EA and thus EA owns the rights to his creation. EA is always going to EA - it's just how they are.

No.3 is where he f**ked himself and the future of the game and anything related to it. He voluntarily placed the cuffs on his own hands by signing the paper.

Now there is no telling if EA was putting him under a lot of pressure to sign a contract like that. Or if he thought it was a good idea at the time. But I thought he would have been smart enough not to trust big corp. Any publisher approaching me with a contract like that is well beyond the point of throwing up red flags. He should have seen it coming.

I also wonder if they offered him any money or royalties to get him to sign it but I guess probably not.
 
That statement doesn't even need to the context of this thread to be a valid statement.

ok but don't like their stuff don't buy them, this is one step above, they don't even let them develop the game, not with a deal, not with nothing.
 
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