The American McGee opinions thread

[LOPcagney]

This week, classes ended and I dragged out American McGee's Alice for the first time in ages to kill time, and I was reminded of how utterly great the game was/is. The graphics haven't aged very badly, and even if they had, the game it paced so brilliantly and the world is so interesting that I'm willing to forget the terrible AI and the bad collision detection in parts. Bottom line is that this is an incredibly creative, surreal and innovative game, even today. Now, since Alice, American's other major "productions" have been Scrapland ("presented by", he may not actually have been involved in the game at all) and Bad Day LA. The former recieved lukewarm reception (and I enjoyed the demo), and Bad Day LA was just utter crap and a downright waste of money. Supposedly the next project he's working on is an episodic series of warped fairy-tales in the same vein as Alice.

He's a man that people either love or hate.

Is he...

A creative and talented game designer, who is most comfortable working with twisted fairy tales; who has the occasional lapse of judgement, but is otherwise an innovative person.

Or is he...

A self-obsessed hack who is trying to fly all of his future projects off the success of Alice, and whose failures overshadow his one success.

[vimes]

I think it's a mistake to think that the guy only broke through thanks to Alice : he was a level designer on Quake and Quake 2 multiplayer map ... which were,if I'm not mistaken, milestones in terms of level design for multiplayer environment.

Of all his games, I only had the chance to play Scrapland which had a very nice universe and art design but was tedious, boring and whose gameplay mechanisms were definitely not well thought through.

[elmuerte]

Alice is a great game.

But Bad Day L.A. was complete crap.

Scrapland was great, but not really an McGee game, he only acted as producer.

I'm not really holding my breath for his next game.

[DanJW]

I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with GRIMM. But the most interesting thing about American McGee in the meantime is his business practices. I think he has some really well thought out, pragmatic and yet within the industry completely "blue sky" approaches. I'm not about to descibe them here though because he has too many things going on and I really wouldn't be able to. Maybe later when my brain has woken up.

[Marek]

Check out the American McGee interview at Shack and MAKE SURE you do not miss the first and last answers.

[DanJW]

Heh yeah I just read that

[Kolzig]

Heheh, yeah Shack's interview was great.

I do hope that American has lots of success with the Grimm episodic games.

Badday L.A. was just crap as everyone knows, but now it's a great moment for McGee to make some great games again.

One thing about the recent news of McGee is that I'm a little worried about all this talk about using third party Asian teams and companies to produce stuff for his Grimm games. Will the end result be "done quick, done cheaply?"

[vimes]

Go look at his blog, you'll find plenty of reassuring info about his business/creative model there.

[brkl]

And look at Bad Day L.A. for the opposite.

[vimes]

But he wasn't in his curent business model yet , was he ?

[brkl]

Wasn't he? Ah well, anyway, can read the Idlethumbs interview and his Bad Day L.A. era business model will sound good if you don't know how the game ended up.

[elmuerte]

what is his new business model then? episodic content?

or cheap labor for low quality stuff for a budget title that in the end is still overpriced?

[Fayk]

what is his new business model then? episodic content?

or cheap labor for low quality stuff for a budget title that in the end is still overpriced?

I'm not an American McGee fanboy or anything (never played Alice, for example - when I finally bought it, there was some reason I couldn't get it to run/install that I don't recall now) but from what I've heard, it sounds like Grimm's will be entirely on Gametap. That sounds like it may be -the- smart venue to have Episodic Content fulfill its potential without just being a way to give you the same content in more pieces for more money, since it's a subscription service.

[elmuerte]

well, except that gametap is only available to north American users, or did they finally expand their service area?

[Wrestlevania]

well, except that gametap is only available to north American users, or did they finally expand their service area?

It's still a little cloudy at this point - plus it crashes on my machine when it tries to start up anyway...

Anyway, my opinon of American McGee would be: compelling art style, good grasp of essential mechanics, but struggles with the "meat" - hence the reliance on prior works (i.e. Alice, Grimm) to flesh things out convincingly. Whilst I couldn't shake the nagging "it's just a pretty Quake 2 mod" feeling when I played Alice, I still want to see his forthcoming Grimm episodes succeed.

I'll also make a point of adding that Shack interview to my reading list.

Bonus Point: Chris also mentioned Thumbs, whilst talking about working for Shack News, on the latest Played podcast, which I was listening to on the way into work this morning.

[elmuerte]

the concept of BDLA wasn't bad, it was the eventual design and implementation that sucked.

[LOPcagney]

It's still a little cloudy at this point - plus it crashes on my machine when it tries to start up anyway...

Anyway, my opinion of American McGee would be: compelling art style, good grasp of essential mechanics, but struggles with the "meat" - hence the reliance on prior works (i.e. Alice, Grimm) to flesh things out convincingly. Whilst I couldn't shake the nagging "it's just a pretty Quake 2 mod" feeling when I played Alice, I still want to see his forthcoming Grimm episodes succeed.

I agree 100%. While for it's time Alice was pretty innovative, if a little clumsy, most of what stood out to me as being exceptional was the level design, which is of course what McGee was always famous for. It felt as though (and I don't particularly mind that the game is set up this way) that the story and enemies were tacked onto the world to serve as a motivation to explore the entire game. I found the game world more involved and intriguing than the combat or the storyline.

For example, the Pale Realm levels set in a life-sized game of chess were brilliant, especially when you took the rolls of various chess pieces and had to move appropriately, but the concept of an entire kingdom of chess pieces was harder too enjoy when every five seconds you're getting knocked over by some enemy rook. I think that McGee should have held back on the enemies at this point and thought of some other way to make the level challenging, like he did with a particular level near the end of the game which features no enemies at all.

[elmuerte]

Alice and F.A.K.K.2 were both released around the same time and both had great level designs.... I'm really into surrealism.

Alice was the main reason I was interested in McGee/BDLA

[nckrlf]

I remember being impressed by the slickness of the BDLA trailer. Of course it didn't show any gameplay whatsoever, but I was still a little surprised that the game turned out to suck so much.

Then again, for all I know they just had a production company make the trailer.

[elmuerte]

well the trailer wasn't much more than the non interactive movies sequences sticked together

[LOPcagney]

Alice and F.A.K.K.2 were both released around the same time and both had great level designs.... I'm really into surrealism.

Whoa! I didn't know anyone had heard of F.A.K.K.2! I missed it so I don't know how big it was (or wasn't), but man, I just recently discovered the Heavy Metal animated movie and I love it. It's so weird. It's drawn in that incredible surreal pulp-sci-fi style that's very evocative of cheesy spray-painted murals at shabby amusement parks, if that makes much sense.

[Wrestlevania]

Whoa! I didn't know anyone had heard of F.A.K.K.2!

The game was actually very, very good. The gameplay worked, combat was exciting and character control was arguably far superior to then-contemporary Tomb Raider 2.

[brkl]

Whoa! I didn't know anyone had heard of F.A.K.K.2! I missed it so I don't know how big it was (or wasn't), but man, I just recently discovered the Heavy Metal animated movie and I love it. It's so weird. It's drawn in that incredible surreal pulp-sci-fi style that's very evocative of cheesy spray-painted murals at shabby amusement parks, if that makes much sense.

Yeah, if the murals had boobs and violence on them.