I’m a big fan of American McGee, both as a personality and as a game designer, and I, like many others, have been waiting for years something to happen with the Alice franchise. So the recent (terse) announcement on McGee’s personal blog has left me tentatively overjoyed. Of course, nothing is official yet, everything rides on the grace of EA, and of all the games publishers in the world, this one–
–might actually consider tossing a small amount of cash McGee’s way with instructions to make them something artsy and cool and not too expensive. Two years ago I would have said such a thing was impossible, and for two consecutive E3’s I, along with others, have shaken my head at the indie segments of EA’s presser as a disingenuous and misplaced effort.
Let there be no mistake, even if EA makes Asylum happen, it still won’t win them much favor or respect from me. It almost certainly will, however, win sixty dollars from my wallet, and from the wallets of a small army of Alice fans. I devoutly hope that EA does not scoff at this opportunity; at the very least I hope they are willing to try the Shenmue III route and run a Kickstarter if they feel that they must minimize their own investments.
Neither the first nor the second Alice games were very good, but they had a spark of imagination in them, a hope of potential waiting to flower. It remains to be seen whether McGee truly has the skill to realize this potential if given the resources to do so, but with Platinum Games and Yoko Taro collaboration NieR: Automata available at this very moment and Monster Hunter: World and Shadow of the Colossus in development, anything seems possible. The optimist in me is sniffing a change in the air of the industry, the realist in me is dismissive. Time will tell the rest.
For now, throw some support behind McGee and his pitch by joining his mailing list, if for no other reason than that a politically outspoken and publicly anti-SJW game developer can have a chance at success. Third time might be the charm.
fishing for fairy tales 