EA Rejects Alice in Wonderland Threequel, Development on Asylum Ceases

[Chrispy_]

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.

I boycotted EA in 2011. Since then I've paid Valve £2.99 for Madness Returns (because I wanted Valve's patching, fixing, de-EA'ing of the game launcher process) and that's it.

I've played Mass Effect: Andromeda, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, and 2012's Syndicate by donning my tricorne, pegleg, and shoulder parrot.
I've played Titanfall 1 and 2, Jedi Fallen Order & Survivor, and Battlefield V as gifted or free (from a hardware promo) that required me to give zero money to EA directly.

I have a couple of friends I've known since school who have worked for EA, been ground down to a husk, and spat out as a burnt-out wreck. One of them saw the light now works for Valve in Seattle, the other now works outside the games industry, declaring it too toxic to return to.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

No company can foreclose a work that has acquired free use status after the copyright has expired. They can only foreclose the implementation of their game based on it, in technical solutions and elements characteristic of the company that determine the mechanics of interactions, design, artistic elements and other technical details. EA cannot prohibit the use of the work itself (written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)) by any company or territory in any other legal or person or territory, since it has no rights over it.

 

[AsRock]

I've been done with EA for many years, they need people with some guts at that place.

 

[Bomby569]

No company can foreclose a work that has acquired free use status after the copyright has expired. They can only foreclose the implementation of their game based on it, in technical solutions and elements characteristic of the company that determine the mechanics of interactions, design, artistic elements and other technical details. EA cannot prohibit the use of the work itself (written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)) by any company or territory in any other legal or person or territory, since it has no rights over it.

that's not the point, they have a contract signed where they agreed not to develop a game based on this game.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

that's not the point, they have a contract signed where they agreed not to develop a game based on this game.

Yes but have possiblity to develop game which is not based on ea game, but on Carol's book.

 

[Bomby569]

Yes but have possiblity to develop game which is not based on ea game, but on Carol's book.

as i understood it, that's exactly what they can't do

 

[TumbleGeorge]

as i understood it, that's exactly what they can't do

Either you misunderstood or the contract is illegal. EA does not own the rights to the novel and cannot prohibit its use.

 

[Bomby569]

Either you misunderstood or the contract is illegal. EA does not own the rights to the novel and cannot prohibit its use.

i don't think so, they work on that specific novel and signed a contract that they couldn't do another game based on it, i'm sure that's not illegal. It would be difficult for them to say they didn't based it on prior work paid by EA.
But i'm not a lawyer

 

[Chrispy_]

Either you misunderstood or the contract is illegal. EA does not own the rights to the novel and cannot prohibit its use.

McGee could make a different Alice game, but the whole point of Alice: Asylum was that it was a continuation of the original American McGee's Alice.

To make a new Alice game, they'd have to throw out everything and start entirely from scratch. If anything looked like it was borrowed or referencing either of the EA Alice games, they'd be easy targets for a lawsuit. Even the dark premise of Wonderland being the tormented imagination of Alice, and why she's locked up in a mental asylum is EA's property.

The actual source material isn't remotely suitable for an adult video game; At a stretch you could interpret Carroll's work as a metaphor for existential nihilism, but the origin of Alice in Wonderland was a story he told to keep the three young daughters of friends entertained while on a boating trip . It's lighthearted, fantastical literary nonsense that's exactly what children want to hear. If McGee wants to make a non-EA Alice game, he's going to have to find a new way to make it appealing to gamers, because EA own the plot that gave us a dark spin on Carroll's work from the first two games.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

The actual source material isn't remotely suitable for an adult video game; At a stretch you could interpret Carroll's work as a metaphor for existential nihilism, but the origin of Alice in Wonderland was a story he told to keep the three young daughters of friends entertained while on a boating trip . It's lighthearted, fantastical literary nonsense that's exactly what children want to hear. If McGee wants to make a non-EA Alice game, he's going to have to find a new way to make it appealing to gamers, because EA own the plot that gave us a dark spin on Carroll's work from the first two games.

Yes, my opinion with more words.

 

[Chrispy_]

Yes, my opinion with more words.

Wait, I thought you were saying McGee could make an Alice game?
I'm pointing out that the Alice IP isn't what makes McGee's version good, it's the dark and twisted setting that EA wholly owns.