The creator of the Alice franchise has explained how the studio behind the game was essentially in open revolt – and why that is part of what made the project memorable.
American McGee has been in an unusually talkative mood lately. Just days after recounting how a Valve demo he saw while working on Quake 2 at id Software inspired him, he shared another story about Alice: Madness Returns. It offers an entertaining look at game financing, dildo snails, and maybe even one reason Electronic Arts ultimately had no appetite for a third entry in the series. As long as Spicy Horse, the Shanghai studio McGee founded in 2007, stayed on schedule and on budget, it enjoyed full creative freedom. The only real limitation was that the team had to stick to the original plan and script it had submitted to Electronic Arts at the end of pre-production.
It would be fair to say that there was a fairly big disconnect between the game I wanted to make and the game EA Marketing wanted me to make when we were developing Madness Returns.
The marketing team felt strongly that a Hard M title focused on gore, horror, and featuring a… https://t.co/HddXtHuWXz
— 🔪 American McGee 🖤 (@americanmcgee) April 23, 2026
“It would be fair to say there was a pretty big disconnect between the game I wanted to make and the game EA Marketing wanted me to make when we were developing Madness Returns. The marketing team felt strongly that a Hard M-rated title focused on gore, horror, and a ‘psychotic’ Alice was what audiences would respond to best. I did not want to portray Alice as a psychopath, cover her in blood, or make things sexier – yes, that was an actual request. In response to the sexy request, I pasted dildos onto the head of a giant snail and emailed that image to the marketing team. That was the end of those requests.
The reason I was able to say no at all came down to the financing agreement behind the project. Electronic Arts did not finance the game – a bank in Los Angeles did. The arrangement was structured the way film-production deals often are, through bond financing. That meant that as long as we stayed on schedule and on budget, we had complete autonomy over the design, the story, and the development. We had to stick to the original plan and script that we submitted once pre-production ended. And we did. We never missed a milestone during the entire project. Because of that, we were able to reject every request and demand EA made.
That setup was fantastic until it stopped being fantastic. By the end of the project, I knew we needed another 30 to 60 days for polish – the game felt too long in places and needed editing. EA, probably out of a little spite, said no. Fair play. So we shipped the game exactly on budget and on schedule, with no EA interference. But we also shipped it without the extra month or two of final editing time we could have used. In all of this, we made history. Madness Returns was not just the first AAA game developed entirely by a Chinese team. It was also the first game in China to be financed through bond issuance. We were the first team to tell Electronic Arts to go f*ck itself and kind of get away with it.”
McGee wrote that.
I tried searching my emails for it and failed.
Then I tried to Google it.
Yeah, don’t try to Google it.
I really wish I hadn’t 😂— 🔪 American McGee 🖤 (@americanmcgee) April 23, 2026
In another tweet, McGee said he searched his email for the snail images and could not find them. He then tried Googling the idea and quickly came to the conclusion that nobody else should do that either. McGee is currently working on something connected to Alice: a spiritual successor based on the Plushie Dreadfuls dolls. A small team is handling it, made up of people he has known, trusted, and cared about for years.
Source: PC Gamer
