American McGee’s Alice Returning … Via Patreon?

American McGee’s Alice series has been lying dormant after Alice Madness Returns in 2011, and it seemed like EA wanted nothing to do with the series afterwards … at least for now. McGee himself though, it seems, has been working on trying to get the next game off the ground, and he and his team are making progress.

Starting off, he has set up a Patreon for fans to get involved with the development of the game, titled Alice: Asylum — to make it the world’s first ever, crowd-designed, triple-A game. As McGee said himself on the Patreon page:

“My goal is to build a production/design plan, have that plan approved by EA, and then raise funding to develop a new game … I’m aiming at an as-yet unspecified date for the launch of the crowdfunding campaign and will spend the time leading up to this date preparing art, writing story/design, and sharing all of this with the Alice community.”

As someone who enjoyed Alice: Madness Returns, to see and hear this is happening is a bit of fresh air. A few years ago, rumors surfaced that EA wasn’t interested in continuing the series at the time, but if that is true, that is not stopping McGee and his team.

He continues, “Join me and the Alice community in shaping the visuals, mechanics, and narrative of Alice’s next adventure. Via Patreon, YouTube, and other sharing platforms we’re working as a team to make sure the next Alice game is everything you want it to be. Here on Patreon you’ll get early access to our creative output and have a direct line of communication to me and the community! … How do I use the funding? The production of art and design materials related to new projects like Alice: Asylum require a time/money investment. Each new concept image can cost between $750 and $1200 depending on the style, complexity of the image, and artist in question …  Your support helps me and my team maintain development momentum and share our art, designs, and games with the world.”

Going over their YouTube, Facebook and Patreon pages, you can tell they are hard at work on bringing this game to life. The team has started over a year ago after they made the announcement, and the concept art has kept coming as well as ideas from fans on what to implement, what needs to be changed in concept art, and anything else the devs ask them.

This honestly feels like a fresh take on the whole triple-A game development process, and one I welcome with open arms as communication between developers and gamers is usually minimal or is practically non-existent … going off just feedback that studios get from links they put out to forms for gamers or just going over gamers’ heads telling them “this is what is happening.” If the team is doing great so far by doing this, maybe other studios will see this and open up and engage more with gamers to figure out?

If you’re interested in checking out and backing Alice: Asylum, head over to their Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/americanmcgee. Who knows, this might be a game you like help bring to life!

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