American McGee says they were "emotionally quite destroyed" by EA canceling Alice Asylum, and now they can't touch the IP "for the rest of [their] life
American McGee says they were "emotionally quite destroyed" by EA canceling Alice Asylum, and now they can't touch the IP "for the rest of [their] life
Ah they nailed him with a noncompete for that public domain IP. Crafty.
He nailed himself when he took people's money, spent all his energy on the "game bible," and then promised he would make a game he did not have authority to make. It's not like it was a surprise to him. He's the victim of his own decisions ultimately here.
Alice was a cool game. The 2nd one was...we can say good. He got two at-bats for the game, it never took off, the second sold particularly poorly. The cult following isn't enough and frankly he has demonstrated very little of what would make this new game so special. He had one cult hit almost 25 years ago and ansolid but not special, kind of buggy follow-up. I just think this entire project is all audience hype at this point.
I mean, I get it. Its a cool idea, a cool world, and its his brain child.
Tbh its kinda bullshit he cant make a game for a world EA will literally never ever ever use. Theyve just shoved it as far up their own asses and plan on keeping it there.
Id rather a shitty 3rd game than never getting another shot at a cool world.
Yeah, I don't get it, the 2nd one is also kinda meh compare to what other contemporary games were already doing at the time. (tech/style/game mechanics). Like yeah you don't have to follow the trend, but it still feels like a quake era game in the Assassin's Creed era(don't know what other games to better show the 2010s open world trend).
I feel the same way. It must be absolutely miserable to work on a game for so long and then be shut down by a legal department, but he knew the risks.
For what it’s worth, you can’t use public domain to make a copy of someone else’s take on that public domain character. It’s like how Winnie the Pooh is public domain but you can’t make a Winnie the Pooh with a red shirt and no pants since thats clearly Disney’s version which isn’t public domain.
I enjoyed Madness Returns but the main problem was that some of the chapters just dragged so much. If they’d cut it down they could have made a really really good budget game and nothing of value would have been lost. It’s a 14 hour game with 6 hours of content.
"Also, there's a tv series in production."
Yeah, right. I'll believe it when I see it.
"I penned a pilot"
Well hopefully American McGee will make a come back with some other great video game series. There are plenty of ideas out there outside of Alice in Wonderland. Though that was a great game! I hope he doesn’t give up quite yet.
Didn't he announce his retirement back in April?
I replay madness returns every year or so. Such a fun platformer.
I keep trying to play it, but the levels are so fucking long. I just want the story now.
It's one of the games that I've been meaning to play on my backlog. It does suck that it's not going to have a sequel.
I loved the Alice games, they were so well done.
That sucks, I would have loved to see Asylum come to the surface. Sadly as it's been so many years I don't think it's going to get around to much that it's no longer happening or was happening in the first place.
They can't touch IP based on a public domain work??
He can make something based off of Through the Looking Glass, but he can't make something called American McGee's Alice or use any established characters from that IP.
Realistically he should just switch to another public domain fantasy. Kickstart "American McGee's Oz".
He can make something based off of Through the Looking Glass
And he should. Give the characters a dye job, spell their names different, and have at it.
They can't touch an IP derived from a public domain work. If they want to make a new IP, they have to go through all the effort of re-deriving it from the public domain work. Hope this makes sense, I'm just a creative person and not a lawyer.
Edit: If derivative works from public domain were not protected, WOO BOY would Disney be in trouble.
It's very likely that as a part of whatever existing deal he has with EA, he had to specifically sign some form of non-competition clause that made it so he can't just leave and make "shmalice in shmonderland" and say it's technically distinct, despite being the obvious follow up to the games owned by EA. Greedy? Yeah. But it's not like he didn't know what he was signing up for. There's plenty of other options for publishers out there who are perfectly willing to not give a fuck about your IP, and just want up front cash and/or a cut of sales. The downside being that, unlike someone like EA, theyre going to have a much more limited reach in terms of getting your game on store shelves, and getting ads in front of eyeballs, if they even do that much.
If you want, creative independence, then don’t merge with a mega corporation.
The original was released by EA over 20 years ago. It's not like its something they bought up.
You said this so much more diplomatically than I was going to.
EA was hardly a mega corp when they published the first game though. Where is Taylor Swift when you need her?
The EA has been a gaming mega corp for at least 30 years.