EA’s decision to cancel Alice Asylum caused a lot of emotional damage
It’s with sad news that American McGee, the lead creator behind the Alice series, asked fans to “move on”. EA has once again turned down their proposal for the Alice Asylum sequel.
McGee published a video on YouTube titled Asylum: Final Word” where he revealed that he felt “emotionally quite destroyed” after EA has turned down their team’s proposal for the Alice Asylum sequel for a third time now.
McGee posted in April 2023 on Patreon. Where he explained that after they presented the EA team with a design bible containing the ideas, stories, concepts, artworks, and even production costs the publisher still went ahead and turned down the proposal. Which in short means, no Alice sequel.
“[EA] has ultimately decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal,” the Patreon post read. “On the question of licensing, they replied that ‘Alice’ is an important part of EA’s overall game catalogue, and selling or licensing it isn’t something they’re prepared to do right now.”
McGee added in his video, “I was emotionally quite destroyed by the fact that our proposal was rejected. Not only because we had invested so much into it as a community, and as creators, but also because I felt quite strongly that it presented a vision for something that was not only achievable but would have been quite beautiful if we had been allowed to pursue it.”
It’s hardly surprising that fans of the series felt extremely disappointed upon hearing this news. Fans quickly reacted with ideas and proposals on how to get the new project off the ground, including the possibility of developing a spiritual sequel. They even went as far as to suggest that McGee should look into developing an entirely new game based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland since it’s in the public domain.
At that moment, fans received even sadder news. The rights to Alice is very complicated and pretty much boil down to “I, American McGee, have no control over ownership in or ability to do things similar to or derivative of Alice and Wonderland or anything like it for the rest of my life.”
“At the end of it all,” McGee went on to say in the video, “the owners of the IP, Electronic Arts, made clear that they have no desire to see the Alice franchise continued by me or anyone else.” It’s here where McGee told fans, “Please just move on” Any future questions, complaints or thoughts should be shared with EA directly, it is out of their hands now.