American McGee: EA wanted to “trick” gamers with Alice:MR Marketing

Alice: The Madness Returns developer American McGee has criticised the game’s publisher EA for the marketing of the title.

“If you check out the trailers they did for A:MR, all you can say is “Wow!” What was frustrating was how EA Marketing interfered – telling STS from the start that ALL creative direction and final say would come from them, not from us (the developer/creator of the story/tone).” said McGee in a Reddit AMA thread.

“That resulted in trailers that were much darker and gorier than the game … and that was a calculated disconnect created by EA. They wanted to “trick” gamers into believing A:MR was a hard-core horror title, even though we refused to develop it in that tone.”

“Their thinking is, even if the game isn’t a hard-core horror title, you can market it as one and trick those customers into buying it (while driving away more casual customers, like female gamers, who might be turned off by really dark trailers).”

Alice: Madness Returns released in June 2011, It received a Metacritic score of 70.