Le game designer American McGee shared his disappointment on his Twitter and his Patreon: following long discussions, Electronic Arts refused to commit to the production of Alice: Asylum. After American McGee’s Alice in 2000 and Alice: Madness Madness in 2011, this would have been the third title from his nightmarish rewrite of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but the publisher’s decision puts an end to it. to the series of games.
The least we can say is that the project seemed close to the heart of McGee. After all, he had already been involved in this universe for more than two decades, and he had managed to gather around him a community of around 3,000 fans who, through his Patreon, had helped fund the preproduction of Alice: Asylum. The culmination of this work was made public with the posting online on February 14 of a game design bible of more than 400 pages, as well as with the announcement of the Virtuos Team studio as a potential partner, production plan supporting.
The ax fell as this new opus was regarding to enter the production phase, five years following being initiated. The reasons put forward would be the not very encouraging results of market studies carried out by Electronic Arts. The company nevertheless wanted to keep control of the license rights, thus preventing the developers from continuing the project on their side. This situation is indicative of a standoff between studios and publishers, the latter recovering in most cases the intellectual property of the works, and therefore blocking any possibility of producing sequels, prequels or spin-offs without their blessing. With Electronic Arts refusing to go any further, Alice: Asylum thus finds itself at an impasse. One can thus imagine the bitterness of the creator, who declared in response to this his intention to withdraw from the video game industry.
However, Electronic Arts’ decision not to proceed with the proposal of McGee is not really a surprise. There are many projects that never see the light of day and, concerning Alice: Asylumthere seemed to be water in the gas for a long time. American McGee had indeed long-standing disagreements with his publisher, whom he blamed in particular for having carried out a deceptive marketing campaign for Alice: Madness Returns, which pushed its horrifying dimension and did not reflect the real tone of the film. work. There is no doubt that such disagreements on the artistic vision did not bode well for future collaborations. McGee also indicated on its Patreon that Electronic Arts had already prohibited its team from working on a concrete prototype for legal reasons.
It should also be noted that he mentioned budgetary needs of the order of 50 million dollars for the development ofAlice: Asylum, excluding marketing costs, which on AAA titles are often an amount at least equivalent to the cost of production. Even for a publisher with a large strike force, the sum remains substantial, and would have placed the project at the level of a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or a Final Fantasy XII: franchises with much more solid kidneys. Despite the good reception received by the author’s previous games, these figures might therefore seem unreasonable. By comparison, Alice: Madness Returns only cost $9 million.
In this context, free access distribution of the Bible of Alice: Asylum was obviously not innocent. We can read there the will to prove to the cautious publisher the interest that the project was likely to arouse, even an attempt to force his hand, since the Electronic Arts logo appeared in the video presentation of the document accompanied by the caption “Let’s make impossible things happen”. McGee This was not his first foot call to the company, which he occasionally called out via his Twitter account. However, this perseverance was not enough to obtain a green light for the future.
So, did the death knell really sound for the Alice of McGee ? A series inspired by this universe was announced in January 2022 by Radar Pictures, however, without news of the project since, we can also worry regarding the fate of it. If it can happen that a scenario remains several years in limbo while waiting for the right moment for its realization, the negative signal sent by Electronic Arts might also contribute to burying these inclinations of audiovisual adaptation. The Bible of Alice: Asylum remains available for download on the Patreon ofAmerican McGee.