American McGee Says EA Wanted to Fool Gamers With Alice Marketing

American McGee, the creative director for A:MR  recently stated that EA wanted to fool gamers with their Alice: Madness Returns marketing.

Basically EA wanted the game to be marketed as a horror game, instead of what it actually is. This was against the wishes of American McGee, which claims that was never the direction they wanted to go with the game. In a Reddit “Ask Me Anything Session“, McGee was quoted saying the following:

“What is 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),” McGee says. “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). It’s all a part of the race to the bottom EA, Activision and the other big pubs are engaged in. Expect to see it get worse before it gets better.”

Take a look at a couple of the trailers below: