American McGee wants Alice community to stop asking about a sequel
EA owns the rights, and daily enquiries "impede my ability to put effort towards new ideas and new projects"
American McGee has asked fans of his Alice games to stop asking about the future of the series. The volume of daily enquiries "literally impedes my ability to put effort towards new ideas and new projects," he said.
The last entry in the series was Alice: Madness Returns in 2011, a sequel to American McGee's Alice from 2000. Despite the long gaps between games, however, McGee has claimed that he still receives questions about a third game multiple times a day.
In a blog post published yesterday - one scattered with words and phrases capitalised for emphasis - McGee laid out the situation regarding rights ownership and the possible future of the series.
"Reading this, you won't need to send a message to me directly asking any of these questions. That would be great," he said, later adding, "apologies if this message comes out sounding frustrated or angry, but the amount of traffic I get on these questions literally impedes my ability to put effort towards new ideas and new projects. I don't want to ignore the questions, but I do wish the volume would lessen."
The main problem is one of ownership, because McGee clearly states that "I want to see a new game as much as you do." However, as the publisher of both previous Alice games, EA still owns the IP rights and evidently has no interest at the present time in making another.
McGee stressed that EA wouldn't "allow me (or anyone else) to crowd fund, raise investment for, or otherwise self-develop, self-fund, or self-publish any interactive version of Alice."
McGee added: "EA [is] aware that you'd like a new Alice game and that RJ Berg and I would be happy to assist in the design, writing, and development of such. We simply need to wait until EA think the time is right for a new game.
"There probably will be another Alice game before we all die, but your requests, ideas, and harebrained schemes to make that happen faster should be sent to EA, not me."
McGee has pursued another Alice related project in the time since Madness Returns: Alice Otherlands, which raised $222,0000 through Kickstarter to create a series of animated shorts and develop an animated series and feature-film. The film rights to Alice, McGee said, are not controlled by EA.