It’s pretty clear that American McGee (and fans) want a Alice: Asylum to be made. We’ve mentioned McGee’s efforts several times over the years, and he’s upped the push now with a new video announcing the launch of the game’s Design Bible (which you can download for free), as well as potential news on a development partner.
“The culmination of our team’s efforts on the first pre-production phase of Alice: Asylum, (Alice’s potential third video game adventure) is now contained within the completed Alice: Asylum Design Bible,” says McGee in a new Patreon post. Created as a “sales tool” by American McGee and a small team of artists, designers and writers, the idea behind this book is “to encourage official greenlighting of the development of a new AAA Alice 3 video game, by key stakeholders at Electronic Arts (EA).”
McGee also announced that he’s secured a partnership with developer Virtuos Team, who have created a development budget, schedule and pitch outline for developing Alice: Asylum. In case you’re wondering, Virtuos Team has been co-dev on titles such as The Outer Worlds, Outriders, Dark Souls: Remastered, BioShock: The Collection and more.
Currently, McGee states that the game requires $50 million USD for a development budget, not taking into account the marketing or additional licensing and miscellaneous costs to fully release and publish the game. The main point of contention at this point is EA, which still owns the Alice license.
So far, EA has not responded to McGee’s announcement. but given their recent success with Motive’s Dead Space remake, one would hope that EA could give the green light for another of its dormant properties in Alice.