American McGee's Alice

• 1. Introduction

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  American McGee's Alice begins in 1863, with a house fire that kills the parents of Alice Liddell and leaves her badly burned and psychologically shattered. The game reached players in 2000, and its title carries the name of its designer, a choice he never wanted. That designer came out of id Software, a studio famous for fast, violent shooters. Yet he chose Lewis Carroll's two Alice novels as his raw material and made them gloomy, cruel and bloody. How does a builder of shooter levels end up in Wonderland? What happens to a place made of nonsense when a damaged mind rebuilds it? And why did a game that critics admired never become the film that Hollywood kept announcing?

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• 2. Escape From Space Marines

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  American McGee was a level designer at id Software, working on the Doom and Quake series, when a demonstration changed what he wanted from games. During work on Quake II, the team watched an early version of Valve's GoldSrc engine, a heavily modified and licensed descendant of id's own Quake engine. The demo showed a camera that could be steered to capture cinematic cutscenes and carry a story. McGee was impressed and wanted to use technology like that for storytelling, but he said others at id did not want to go that way.

  He left id in 1997 with a clear itch. He wanted a game with no space marines, no guns, no aliens and no outer space, the staples of Doom and Quake. His dark and lustrous picture of Wonderland came mainly from the Crystal Method track "Trip Like I Do", in which he heard the word "wonder". With his creative partner R.J. Berg, he started sketching a narrative and early designs.

  Not every experiment worked. Early attempts to evolve Carroll's material included manga, futuristic, cartoon and sexual interpretations, and McGee felt they strayed from his intended direction. Sketches of Alice, the Cheshire Cat and the Hatter by Terry Smith and Norm Felchle proved decisive in setting the visual style. They became the foundation for later concept art. McGee also wanted to avoid the faults of his earlier products: recreating reality rather than inventing a fantasy world, reusing traditional weapons, and populating games with unremarkable characters.

  The story itself went through rejected drafts. In one, a modern-day Alice murders her abusive stepfather in reality while she travels through Wonderland, and EA turned that idea down. In another, Alice's parents and acquaintances were projected onto Wonderland's characters while she investigated the cause of her father's death. McGee discarded it as too complicated and aimed for "the simplest story that told the most".

  The team consulted only the original novels and ignored film adaptations and other derivative works. Apart from returning characters and locations, the game makes no reference to the novels' plots, because McGee did not mean it as a continuation or a rival to Carroll. The project had a budget of $4.5 million, and around twenty-seven people worked on it.

  The name on the box was settled by EA, which insisted on it mainly because a new trademark would be easier to register and protect. McGee did not support the title, since he felt it pushed the rest of the team into the background. The game was his debut as a lead designer.

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• 3. A Broken Wonderland

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  Rutledge Asylum is where Alice lands in a state of catatonia, and several years of treatment cannot rouse her. Then her toy rabbit seems to call out for help, and she retreats into a Wonderland that her broken mind has disfigured. The Cheshire Cat greets her and invites her to follow the White Rabbit. Villagers tell her that the Queen of Hearts has pushed Wonderland into decline and despondency, and that the White Rabbit has promised them a champion in Alice.

  An old gnome offers a way forward. He can help her chase the White Rabbit by reducing her size. Together they infiltrate the Fortress of Doors and enter the school inside, where they brew an elixir that shrinks Alice and opens the path to the Vale of Tears.

  In the Vale, Alice helps the Mock Turtle recover his stolen shell from the Duchess. She then catches up with the White Rabbit, who leads her toward the Caterpillar until the normal-sized Hatter's foot crushes him. The Caterpillar explains that Wonderland's current form springs from Alice's survivor guilt, and he advises her to slay the Queen of Hearts. Alice returns to normal size by nibbling a mushroom guarded by the Voracious Centipede.

  On a plateau she finds a piece of the Jabberwock's Eye Staff, and an unseen oracle tells her what comes first. The Queen's sentinel, the Jabberwock, must die before the Queen can, and killing him yields the final piece of the staff. The search takes Alice through the chess-themed Looking-Glass Land, where she defeats the Red King, and past the Hatter's minions Tweedledum and Tweedledee. She then finds the Hatter conducting cruel experiments on the March Hare and the Dormouse while holding the Gryphon captive. After she kills the Hatter, the Gryphon is freed and offers to rally forces against the Queen of Hearts.

  The Gryphon carries Alice to the Land of Fire and Brimstone, home of the Jabberwock. Among the remains of Alice's old home, the Jabberwock torments her with guilt over her parents' deaths and overpowers her in battle. The Gryphon returns and rescues her by taking one of the monster's eyes.

  With the staff complete, the Gryphon points Alice toward Queensland and flies off to stop the Jabberwock himself. On the road to the Queen's castle, Alice watches the two fight in the air, and the Gryphon is mortally wounded. After Alice beats the Jabberwock, the dying Gryphon entrusts the last battle to her.

  At the entrance to the Queen's Hall, the Cheshire Cat tries to confess the truth about the Queen of Hearts. He is executed mid-sentence, as he says "You are two parts of the same...". Alice first fights a figure worked like a puppet by the real Queen, a giant fleshy tentacled creature. The Queen warns that destroying her will destroy them both. When Alice wins, Wonderland is restored and many fallen characters are revived. Her mind repaired, Alice leaves Rutledge Asylum.

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• 4. Sanity and Toys

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  Up to ten weapons are available to Alice, and the game calls them toys. The first she receives is the Vorpal Blade, which pairs with the Croquet Mallet for basic melee attacks. The Ice Wand and an explosive jack-in-the-box reach farther. Most toys have two modes of use that differ in method and strength.

  The combat system picks targets automatically: if an enemy is nearby, the weapon sight locks onto it. Outside combat, the sight turns into a jump indicator shaped like two footprints, which mark the spot where Alice would land.

  Alice follows a linear route in third person. She can talk to non-player characters, fight enemies and bosses, and solve puzzles. Besides walking and jogging, she can jump, cling to ledges, climb and swing on ropes, and swim. She can also glide over columns of steam, using her inflated dress as a makeshift parachute. The levels are full of platforms and obstacles, and four difficulty levels are on offer: Easy, Medium, Hard and Nightmare.

  Because everything happens inside Alice's imagination, health is called sanity and appears as a red bar on the left of the screen. It drops when enemies or environmental hazards hurt her. If it empties, the game ends early and can be resumed from the last save. Magic is called willpower and shows as a blue bar on the right. Almost every toy spends willpower, and a toy stops working when the supply runs too low.

  Crystals scattered across the levels refill these bars, and some respawn in certain places. Meta-essence, described as the life force of Wonderland, restores a certain amount of sanity or willpower. Meta-substance represents the power of imagination and restores both at once. Defeated enemies can leave meta-substance behind, and a stronger enemy leaves more.

  Rarer items give short bursts of power. Ragebox Elixir raises the damage Alice deals with the Vorpal Blade. The Darkened Looking Glass makes her invisible to enemies. Grasshopper Tea boosts her speed and jumping height. Each one changes her appearance until the effect wears off and she returns to her original state.

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• 5. Engine, Cuts and Ratings

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  Ritual Entertainment's Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.² engine, itself a modified version of the Quake III Arena engine, is what EA licensed for the game. Its most notable additions included the Tiki model system, which allows skeletal animation, and the Babble dialog system, which syncs lip movements to recorded audio. It also offered a dynamic music system, a scriptable camera, a particle system and extended shader support. The changes made for Alice were minimal. The game's .bsp files even keep the F.A.K.K.² headers, though with a different version number.

  An early build let the player summon the Cheshire Cat to help in battle. That ability was cut, though beta screenshots of it still circulate online. In the final game a button summons the Cat at any time, but he offers only cryptic advice and does nothing when Alice is under attack.

  A port for the then-unreleased PlayStation 2 was also underway, and its cancellation caused Rogue Entertainment to shut down. McGee was angered by that decision, and in frustration he left EA.

  After release, the box art was changed. The new version showed Alice holding the Ice Wand instead of the Vorpal Blade and softened the skeletal look of the Cheshire Cat's anatomy. EA cited complaints from various consumer groups. McGee said the real reason was internal concern at EA.

  Alice became EA's first M-rated game, and McGee had fought to get that rating. He did not want the game sold at Christmas, when parents might mistake it for a gift for children. In a 2009 interview he voiced regret. He said the violence did not warrant an M rating and that consumers should buy responsibly after consulting the ESRB's recommendations.

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• 6. Vrenna's Toy Box

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  Chris Vrenna spent several months on eBay buying the instruments for the score. His haul included mechanical toys, a xylophone, a cuckoo clock and tubular bells, all bought so he could record sound samples. He composed and recorded the game's music, and he also mixed, produced and arranged the album that Six Degrees Records released. It appeared on CD on the 16th of October 2001 and on digital platforms on the 24th of April 2007.

  The sound is dominated by ambient and experimental electronica. Toy instruments, percussion and music box sounds mix with ticking clocks and creaking doors. Female voices, maniacal laughter, screaming, crying and baby talk fill out the palette. Mark Blasquez wrote the lyrics, and the singer Jessicka featured on the recording. Peter Reardon remixed the track "Flying On The Wings Of Steam (Remix)", and Jeff Antebi managed the project.

  Marilyn Manson was originally involved in scoring the game. McGee called his composition "very cool" and said it had "a very beautiful Beatles-in-their-harpsichord-and-Hookah-pipe-days-sound to it." Manson's contributions lasted into the final product, most visibly through the influence of alchemy. His influence also shaped the adaptation of the Mad Hatter somewhat, and for a time he was considered for the Hatter's voice.

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• 7. Reviews and Relics

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  The game went on sale on the 5th of December 2000 and drew praise for visuals that were very elaborate for their time. Many levels show chaos and wonder, and some recall the inside of an asylum or madhouse, which links Wonderland to Alice's reality. Outside views show the Queen of Hearts's tentacles dipping out of buildings and mountain sides, especially in Queensland. The review aggregator Metacritic lists "favorable" reviews.

  GameSpot said players would enjoy the imaginative artwork but might be disappointed by how straightforward the underlying game is. Blake Fischer reviewed the PC version for Next Generation and gave it four stars out of five, calling it an incredibly beautiful and well-designed shooter. The literary critic Cathlena Martin took a different angle in her article on Carroll's Alice and McGee's. She argued that the game may send players back to Carroll through a darker lens, and that it shows the "versatility and mutability of the story across time and discourse." She also noted that the game benefits from Carroll's tales being built around games, namely cards and chess.

  In the United States, the game sold 360,000 units by August 2006. By September 2017 it had sold 1.5 million copies. Edge declared it the country's 47th-best-selling computer game released since January 2000.

  Promotion began before launch. In 2000, McGee hosted the national Alice Wicked Wonderland Tour with the electronic musician Green Velvet, showing game footage as a multimedia event. Photos from the San Francisco shows were later posted on the official Alice site. Prima Games published a strategy guide the same year, and by January 2002 a comic book series and a toy line were in development.

  Collectors got more. In 2004, EA and Atari released a clear blue 7-inch vinyl record with the remix "Wonderland Woods (Tweaker Remix)" on one side and "Take the Pill" on the other. Only 500 copies were pressed, signed by McGee and Vrenna. In 2006, Muckle Mannequins made life-sized statues of Alice and the Cheshire Cat, and Milo's Workshop issued figurines in four editions between 2000 and 2009. For the tenth anniversary in 2010, Epic Weapons made a life-size stainless steel replica of the Vorpal Blade in 1,000 copies. The first 25 went to auction from the 22nd to the 31st of July 2010.

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• 8. Unmade Adaptations

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  Scott Faye, a spokesman for Dimension Films and an old acquaintance of McGee, visited EA to negotiate a film based on one of its products. He and other Dimension representatives watched gameplay footage of Alice and were impressed by the visuals. Miramax head Bob Weinstein then saw the trailer and backed a film immediately, without waiting for the board of directors. On the 5th of July 2000, FGN Online reported that EA had signed with Miramax. McGee formally announced the film on the 7th of December 2000, after ten months of negotiations. It was entrusted to Collision Entertainment, a Dimension Films subsidiary, with Wes Craven directing and John August writing.

  No actors were signed, though Natalie Portman was rumored to be interested, and Milla Jovovich and Christina Ricci were also rumored. In September 2001, August said he had delivered only a script treatment. In December 2001, Craven announced a computer-animated feature with a tentative 2003 release. Brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber were hired in February 2002 and announced a finished script in July 2003. On the 4th of March 2004, McGee reported that the project had moved to 20th Century Fox.

  The Hollywood Reporter said on the 21st of June 2005 that Universal Pictures had acquired the film and signed Sarah Michelle Gellar, with Marcus Nispel directing. On the 8th of February 2006, Faye, by then a producer, announced a summer 2006 start, a budget of $40 to $50 million and a tentative 2007 release. By 2008 the project was in turnaround, and Nispel and Gellar were no longer involved.

  In July 2013, McGee said Collision Entertainment still held the film rights and would transfer them for $500,000. He tried to raise the money on Kickstarter, which meant abandoning the campaign for Spicy Horse's OZombie project on the 14th of July. After funding for Alice: Otherlands succeeded, he kept pursuing a feature film. On the 17th of February 2014 he announced a British screenwriter. By the 10th of July 2014 progress had halted, because he held rights only to develop the story and still needed the film rights outright, for $400,000. Negotiations went on hiatus on the 8th of January 2015.

  A television series was announced on the 31st of January 2022, with Radar Pictures and Abandon Entertainment developing it and David Hayter writing and co-producing. No broadcaster or streaming platform acquired it. In 2025, McGee wrote on Reddit that all the film and television projects were "dead" after a failed pitch meeting, where a concept involving time travel and a modern-day setting fell flat.

  The sequel took a different route. As the film plans dragged, EA became interested in 2007 in a remake, and work began on a sequel. On the 19th of February 2009, EA CEO John Riccitiello announced a new installment at D.I.C.E. 2009, and Spicy Horse developed it. A fan-made video in November 2009 was mistaken by gaming websites for a teaser trailer.

  Alice: Madness Returns came out on the 14th of June 2011 in North America, with other regions following through July 2011. On Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, a redemption code in the box gave players a free download of the original game, which is how the 2000 game reached those consoles.

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