Remember the cult action game and the creative path of an eccentric game designer.
It would seem that the series of works by Lewis Carroll, dedicated to the adventures of Alice in Wonderland, is an ideal candidate for game adaptation. Especially when it comes to the 80s and early 90s: at that time, game creators, constrained by technical constraints, put the idea of realistic graphics on the back burner and began to create bizarre cartoon worlds. Flying heads, revived sausages and giant dandelions dancing to the beat of the music – all kinds of psychedelics the first gamers have seen. And Wonderland with its absurdistic setting and fanciful characters could well take its rightful place next to the previous examples – but fate decreed otherwise.
In the period from 1985 to 2000, literally a handful of games based on “Alice” were released, the genre of which ranged from quests to primitive tutorials. And, frankly, they did not deserve special attention either then or now. But the creation of American McGee, which appeared on the shelves at the end of 2000, is well remembered to this day. In December American McGee’s Alice turned 20 years old – an excellent reason both to remember the phenomenon of the game itself, and to understand the reasons why the game designer was unable to stay in the ranks of prominent figures in the gaming industry.
Smiling American McGee last September
Lucky case
The beginning of McGee’s career in game design can hardly be called a fluke. In 1992, he rented an apartment next door to John Carmack, one of the future creators Doom and Quake… By that time, American already had experience in programming and was a big fan of games, and therefore two creative people always had something to talk about, and soon Carmack invited McGee to work in the technical support department of a still very young studio. id Software…
The enthusiasm with which the new recruit did his job impressed the management so much that he was soon entrusted with the design of the levels for an additional episode. Ultimate Doom and Doom ii: for his authorship a whole quarter of the last. He also had a chance to test some of the console ports (for example, Wolfenstein 3d for Atari jaguar and Doom for PS1) and work on the first two parts Quake…
McGee (left) while at id Software
The deafening success of id Software’s games turned the head of John Carmack, who was less and less concerned with the opinions of his colleagues and demanded full commitment from them. As McGee later recalled, crunches at that time became commonplace, and more prominent colleagues made fun of him every now and then. The once beloved work suddenly became hard labor, which had to be endured for the sake of money. Perhaps over time, American would have finally run out of patience, but Carmack in a sense made it easier for him by firing McGee after five years of work. The circumstances of the departure are still vague: one can only guess that the reason was creative differences and insufficient – at least in the opinion of the authorities – McGee’s dedication to the common cause. In any case, John Romero was fired a little earlier for all of the above.
American McGee’s Alice
Be that as it may, McGee remained grateful to the former employer. The years spent at id Software turned out to be not only invaluable experience for him, but also an attractive entry in the work book. In any case, the fact of working on Doom and Quake was enough for a guy full of ambitions to be taken in by such a large company as Electronic Arts… Here American pulled out another lucky ticket: the management easily entrusted him with their own project, but demanded to create something original.
It was not nostalgia for childhood that prompted the game designer to recall Alice, but the composition Trip Like I Do by the duo The crystal method… McGee has been listening to harsh electronic music and industrial rock for a long time, so the psychedelic sound of the track, coupled with the lyrics in which the word Wonder was found, prompted him to the idea of a dark interpretation of the fairy tale. He began to work on it together with Robert John Berg, a screenwriter and producer, with whom he was subsequently associated not only with work duties, but also with many years of friendship.
However, despite the fact that McGee was given formal carte blanche for development, many script ideas were rejected by the publisher. The idea of traveling to a cruel Wonderland, spawned by Alice’s inflamed mind, seemed like something out of the ordinary for the late 90s. It is now the authors of almost every second horror actively flirting with surrealism, psychedelic and all possible tropes of psychological thrillers – and for games of that time it was still a rarity.
As a result, McGee made the plot line a little more transparent: after a fire that took the lives of all her family members, Alice ends up in a psychiatric hospital, where she is left to suffer alone with her restless mind. And in order to restore the original appearance of the disfigured Wonderland and bring herself to her senses, the girl has no choice but to go through all the circles of hell and destroy the Queen of Hearts.
This simple story can in fact be interpreted in many ways – all thanks to the abundance of ambiguous hints and understatements left in the game by the author himself. For example, to this day I am of the opinion that Alice’s adventures are nothing more than a denial of reality. The heroine cannot find the strength to live on, considering herself guilty for the death of her family, and therefore tries to escape into the depths of her own subconscious. And the player controlling Alice is either the side of her personality that is trying to keep her sanity, or actions from the outside: for example, psychotherapy sessions or medication.
Wake up samurai you’re in hell!
Perhaps experts in the search for deep meaning will correct me, but in reality, the plot does not play a fundamental role in the game. The success of American McGee’s Alice is primarily due to the extraordinary visuals, in which cartoon characters, grotesque images a la Tim Burton and the consequences of the use of hallucinogens have merged. Of course, such a unique style of the project is the merit not only of McGee himself, but also of artists Terry Smith and Norm Feltschlem: both subsequently achieved great success outside EA. In particular, Smith was involved in the design of the original God of war, and his ex-colleague is now working in Marvel… And the dark ambient soundtrack went to the first “Alice” from Chris Vrenna, the former drummer of the band so beloved by the game designer Nine Inch Nails… Quite an ironic coincidence, as the head of the group, Trent Reznor, recorded the music for the first Quake while McGee was still at id Software. It seems no less ironic that American McGee’s Alice uses an engine from Quake 3, which at the time provided one of the most advanced pictures.
Those were tough times: no markers and tips – figure out for yourself where to run and what to do
I deliberately pushed the gameplay story down to the very end, as it was beset by the traditional curse of many significant games of the era: inability to stand the test of time. And at the time of its release, it must be admitted that it was nothing special – platforming and battles with an emphasis on ranged weapons. Plus or minus all the same was already in the series Tomb raider and her numerous imitators, and the cartoonish appearance of “Alice” makes it possible to draw parallels with Rayman 2… The key difference between McGee’s creation and the listed predecessors lies in puzzles, the complexity of which ranged from the triviality of “find an object there and use it here” to very difficult riddles. As for the main mechanics, then, alas, make the heroine obediently follow the player’s commands and wean the operator from craving for alcohol in Rogue entertainment failed.
In 2001 Ubisoft released an openly shameless clone of “Alice” called Evil Twin: Cyprien’s Chronicles, but the gameplay was much worse there
Of course, at that time, few people snapped at the sometimes inadequately working camera and, even more so, curved platforming. By the end of the 20th century, game designers still lagged far behind artists: if the latter quite quickly worked with new technologies and learned how to produce impressive graphics, then very few managed to properly adapt the gameplay to three dimensions. Therefore, in gameplay terms, American McGee’s Alice was inferior to creations Core and Ubisoft, but also did not cause rejection. But in our time, a gamer who has not seen the times of the formation of 3D will, frankly, be painful to play such a game. It’s good at least that “Alice” has quick saves anywhere – they will help save the keyboard from premature death.
On free bread
Despite the widespread recognition and commercial success of “Alice”, McGee did not go well further. The game designer was very worried about the dismissal of his friend R.J.Berg, and then the studio had problems Rogue entertainment, which was developed by American McGee’s Alice. For some reason, the publisher canceled the port on the PS2, so the out-of-work team started knocking at different offices looking for work. In the end, the developers agreed with Valve – their new project is a shooter Counter-Strike: Condition Zero… Wanting to impress the employer, Rogue entertainment began to crunch in full, hoping for an early release of a playable demo. But less than a month later, one of the founders of the studio announced his departure. And although the team convinced Valve the fact that this will not affect the quality of the game in any way, the customer considered himself cheated and immediately stopped cooperation. The team did not survive the next blow – and for the most part moved to Nerve Software… And this, in turn, led not only to the closure Rogue entertainmentbut also the departure of Americana from EA.
Over the next few years, McGee spent a long time looking for an application as a freelancer, collaborating with various developers on projects that were completely dissimilar in spirit. And here it is worth mentioning one interesting fact: the name of the game designer originally appeared in the name of “Alice” not at all for marketing reasons; EA was simply afraid of litigation with the heirs of the rights to Carroll’s work. As a result, the publishing house did not receive any claims. And since American McGee’s Alice has become so successful, it would seem that the name of its creator among the developers of new projects could well spur their sales – but, unfortunately, it did not work out.
More or less well-proven, except that the futuristic action Scraplanddeveloped by MercurySteam (in the early 2010s, this studio much louder declared itself in two parts Castlevania: Lords of Shadow). Satirical zombie action Bad Day L.A. to this day, it retains its status as one of the worst games in history: a measly 28 points on Metacritic will not let you lie. The surreal fairy tale did not win much success either American McGee’s Grimm, in which McGee decided to mock the creations of the Brothers Grimm: in the role of an evil dwarf, the player wreaked havoc in well-known fairy-tale worlds. At the same time, the gameplay looked too much like a popular series Katamari damacy, so it felt completely secondary.
After several equally vain attempts to realize himself as a game developer for the rapidly gaining weight iOS McGee suddenly remembered about the game that once brought him fame, and began to think about creating a sequel.
Alice: Madness Returns and the further fate of Alice
The idea of playing on gaming nostalgia for American McGee’s Alice seemed very attractive to EA, which still owned the rights to the brand. True, at first the company wanted to see a remake – but McGee insisted on a sequel and got it. Well, how to say: in fact, the line between rethinking the original and the continuation has turned out so thin that one can involuntarily doubt its existence. The first part was a self-sufficient work: Alice defeated her inner demons, thereby returning light and joy to the Wonderland, and she herself left the clinic. But in the sequel, of course, it turns out that this was only a temporary effect, and mental anguish once again prompts the girl to plunge headlong into a nightmare. The plot on the topic “I need to find out the truth about the death of my parents” also seems far-fetched: the first part, with almost direct text, pointed to the causes of the tragedy.
Ah shit, here we go again
However, even if we consider Alice: Madness returns as a retcon, not everything is smooth here either. Those problems with the gameplay of the first part, which were mentioned above, moved to the sequel without any major changes. Alas, the rule “I didn’t change anything for the sake of the fans” only partly works here: the audience fell in love with “Alice” first of all for the grotesque art design, which in the sequel remained faithful to the old traditions. And even the soundtrack still held its own, although Vrenna’s contribution was minimal. However, the comparison with modern action games was not at all in favor of McGee’s creation: the series, which appeared at about the same time as American McGee’s Alice, had time to go through a long evolutionary path. And here is the studio founded by the American Spicy horse I just pulled the skin of Unreal Engine 3 on the old skeleton and minimally tweaked the mechanics. In general, the situation with Madness Returns once again showed that McGee has great taste in art design, but as a game designer he was hopelessly stuck in the early 2000s.
However, this still did not lead to the failure of the project – people’s love works wonders, and games with a similar visual aesthetics have not really appeared over the past ten years. However, the audience greeted the sequel much cooler than the original. McGee, on the other hand, was thinking about a few more sequels.
The first one is Alice in Otherland – planned to be released as an MMO, where characters could penetrate the minds of oncoming creatures and change them. The idea was clearly inspired by Minecraft, where players also change the world around them with their own hands, but Electronic Arts was not impressed by such a concept. But American did not want to give up: realizing that the release of a game with Alice’s participation without the appropriate rights was impossible, he revised plans and turned Alice in Otherland into an animated mini-series, changing the name to Alice: Otherlands and launching a crowdfunding campaign.
This is how the concepts of an MMO that never saw the light of day looked like
True, as often happens with projects made with money from fans, the result was far from promising. In particular, the original description of the miniseries hinted at a much longer duration than the 18 minutes that the sponsors eventually got. And the declared participation of Chris Vrenna did not result in anything: the parties simply did not agree. However, the majority of fans were still satisfied with the result and willingly signed the petition, where they demanded from EA a new game based on “Alice” authored by McGee. True, this did not give any effect (as well as negotiations between the game designer himself and the publisher). Representatives of the latter said that they would consider the proposal only if they were shown a demo – and American, of course, did not have the funds for it.
Since some of the training camps were already crowned with success, McGee decided to try his luck again – however, already at Patreon… A new game called Alice: Asylum it is positioned as a prequel, the events of which will unfold in the interval between the fire and the plot of American McGee’s Alice. But if in the days of Madness Returns it was still possible to forgive McGee for frank self-copying, then here such a leitmotif already seems to be a frank mockery: how much can you suck out of the finger of a game about the same secret? A similar story is with art design: after so many years, I would like to see something new, and not another variation of a painfully familiar style. At least McGee seems to have realized his past gameplay mistakes and decided to add new mechanics to the game like time dilation. True, they are new only for “Alice” – but for the industry they have long been a hackneyed disc.
It seems that McGee himself is not completely sure what he is doing and why. In order to divert possible indignation from himself, the game designer clarified that Alice: Asylum will not necessarily become a game, but fans will still get their portion of new content, whether it be an animated film or a comic book.
“The group Eagles one song – Hotel California. And with her they still collect stadiums. It’s better to write one hit than eight albums about nothing. “, – said in a recent interview a well-known guitar virtuoso and teacher Yuri Mayilyan in the post-Soviet space. This phrase can be safely projected onto the work of American McGee: even if by his 48 years the game designer could not reach the status of a maestro of the gaming industry, he still left a bright mark on it. It is a pity that McGee still could not develop such an original idea for its time and carry it through the years.
Do you believe that one day he will still manage to persuade EA into the third part of “Alice”?
