American McGee apologizes for EA 'trick' comment [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

Alice and Alice: Madness Returns creator American McGee clarified comments he made yesterday about EA's marketing strategy. McGee, who said EA wanted to 'trick' people into perceiving Madness Returns as hardcore horror, apologized to the publisher on his blog today. McGee does maintain the publisher is somewhat at fault for the game's poor sales.

"Allow me to expand on my original post," McGee wrote, "while at the same time making a correction (call it a retraction if you like). 'Tricked' is the wrong word. I take that back. Apologies to EA and anyone else whose feelings were hurt. Electronic Arts doesn't trick customers into buying things. They carefully apply proven marketing techniques to achieve the desired customer response. If they were bad at this sort of thing they'd have been crushed by their competitors long ago and you'd be playing Madden Football from Activision or Atari or something."

McGee then noted that, while Madness Retuirns does include a lot of what's in the trailers in question, the developer felt its marketing didn't portray the Alice character correctly, and made out "blood and guts" to be the game's primary selling point. However, he conceded all of the blame can't be placed at the publisher's doorstep.

"I can't and don't fully fault them or their marketing for whatever the Alice games might or might not have done sales-wise. As a developer, do I grumble into my beer about how it could have been different if only...? Sure do! But I also recognize my own faults, and actions which are to blame for things not being 100 percent... or for inadvertently igniting firestorms."American McGee apologizes for EA 'trick' comment originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

[Collector_Gaming]

God bless corporations.... As soon as you find something wrong with them and try to justify it by pointing those things out publicly you'll have ceo's and lawyers knocking on your front doors.

If I was american mcgee and was capable of releasing games under my name sake on my own and not having to force myself to rely on 3rd party developers such as EA... I would never EVER back down and tell them exactly where they can stick it.

As for alice madness returns not doing so well in sales.... Its another one of those treatments where no one gets it... Wait 5 years and every goth/emo/artistic gamer (unless your like me and jumped the band wagon way ahead of them like the hipster we are gonna be called if the phrase exists in 5 years) will buy this game call it a pure master piece and be flooding his email with non stop compliments and asking for more.

Of course I ask "Well where the hell were you from the start?".

[Graham Mitchell]

I bought the game at launch, and I think it's fun. It's a bit repetitive, but in small play sessions it's decent.

I think that what hurt the game was a lot of bad press and bad reviews. The 23 year old game informer crowd wants their games to play themselves, and be glorified movies. Alice is a straight up platformer, with very little in the way of frills and cinematics. That's not a bad thing. It's just not aligned with the zeitgeist.

[Collector_Gaming]

I think it just gets thrown into the Cult area of gaming. If your the casual gamer you probably will never see this thing or give interest because its not a call of duty or call of duty clone game. Which is sad. Because this game to me was art in motion. Its dark but not demonically evil like the game Killing Floor if you guys ever played that.

To me is like the crow the movie. Its dark but elegant. Harsh but realistic. It explores the dark side of the tale that disney did not wish to cover and probably should be told to the public in some way or another.

Like you said some of it feel repetitive but still feels refreshing from the day in day out FPS or game that holds your hand as you play through it (like Dead Island is the best example i played).

And it pisses me off when i see gamers complain about wanting new refreshing games from the sea of call of duty games but yet turn a blind eye games like this.

Whatever I guess thats life and everyone has their own tastes.

[Gameguy]

'Tricked' is the wrong word. I take that back. Apologies to EA and anyone else whose feelings were hurt. Electronic Arts doesn't trick customers into buying things. They carefully apply proven marketing techniques to achieve the desired customer response.

That's clearly a different definition of "tricked", marketing is something entirely different.

I didn't buy this for a few reasons. I don't own any of the current consoles right now, and the PC requirements are higher than what my computer can handle. I've listened to a few reviews back when it came out which basically said it was good but not as good as the first game, and earlier reviews of the first game mention that it's a good game but not great as the controls aren't perfect making it somewhat average in terms of gameplay. I do own the first game but haven't got around to playing it yet so I didn't bother getting the second game yet, I figured I'll eventually get it when I find a PS3 at a yard sale.

[j_factor]

As for alice madness returns not doing so well in sales.... Its another one of those treatments where no one gets it... Wait 5 years and every goth/emo/artistic gamer (unless your like me and jumped the band wagon way ahead of them like the hipster we are gonna be called if the phrase exists in 5 years) will buy this game call it a pure master piece and be flooding his email with non stop compliments and asking for more.

That's basically what happened with the original American McGee's Alice. History repeating.

The only thing American McGee should be apologizing for is Bad Day L.A.

[PapaStu]

The only thing American McGee should be apologizing for is Bad Day L.A.

I'm still waiting on the XBox release. Fucker.