“David DeMartini On Biz, Alice, More”, a mention of the new Alice in there: Read on Gamasutra
Category Archives: Spicy Horse
The Return of Alice
Alice Sequel – Snail Fight Image
Waking up in Shanghai this morning I’m greeted with a flood of emails, facebook messages, and phone calls. The world now knows what we here at Spicy Horse have known for some time: We’re making a sequel to “American McGee’s Alice” with Electronic Arts (EAP to be exact).
Not much can be said about the new project at this time. We are building it here in Shanghai. RJ Berg, who wrote the original and served as Executive Producer on the project, will reprise that role. The game will be delivered on PC, PS3, and 360. More details will come later of course. Until then, you can read the official press release. Or read EA’s official news blurb.
For me and the studio this obviously represents huge news. The original Alice was a good bit of fun – and aspects of the original are still quite compelling. The challenge for us – to build a great game, and a sequel worthy of the original – is real, but not daunting. Over the past few years we’ve assembled a really amazing team. I have full faith in their ability to create something amazing.
For me, this is a dream come true. The project will be fun, the studio can grow (and move – check out my flickr for pics of our new space), and we’ll eventually ship something unique. Lots of potential wrapped up in this news – I know I’ll be doing everything I can to make something great of it.
Check back here or in the forums for future updates. Can’t say I expect there to be much more news for a while – probably months. But if it’s allowed, I try to post some project updates, art, etc.
Also, a quick word of thanks to everyone at EA, EAP, CAA, and Weissman Wolff for everything they did to get this deal done.
And, we’re still looking for a few good people to join the team at Spicy Horse. Check out the hiring section for more info.
Grimm Postmortem
Models & Animation Pipeline
Gamasutra is featuring a lengthy postmortem of “Grimm”. The article was primarily written by Grimm’s producer Wim Coveliers with contributions by all of the Spicy Horse team. It does a good job in detailing the high-level things that went right and wrong during the production of Grimm. From the article:
Going into production, we knew we had a lot on our hands: we were going to develop the world’s first weekly episodic game, and we had exactly one year before the first episodes were scheduled to air.
Since nobody had done a project with these variables, we had to create most of our scheduling and pipelines from scratch, based on the team’s instincts and varied experience.
Now, a year and a half after starting development of our prototype, eight episodes of Grimm have been released; sixteen more episodes will be distributed in the next several months.
The game has been very well received: it has become the best-selling game on the GameTap service, and with plans to bring it to other digital distribution platforms, the future looks very bright for Grimm (however much he hates bright things himself!)
And while the article provides some interesting insights, it barely scratches the surface of the story – the energy, ideas, pain, and joy that went into building a new studio in China while developing a first-of-kind episodic game. One thing that always amazes me are the personal stories carried by the individuals in our team – the backgrounds, travels, adventures, loves, losses, and other unique elements that make the people, and in turn the team, what they are… A really beautiful thing.
I’m proud to have been a part of it all. And hopeful for what the future holds in store for Spicy Horse. As we head into the New Year (Chinese!), I’m wishing everyone prosperity, health, and happiness.
Bring on the Year of the Cow! Moo!
American in China
The Spicy Horse Logo
Brian Ashcroft from Kotaku has presented a really great interview with me and a few others from Spicy Horse. It details the history of my move to China, the formation of Spicy Horse, and our vision of the future of games in China. From the article,
It was 2007, and China was buzzing — with optimism and energy. “Chinese contemporary society is like a whirlwind,” says McGee’s business partner and art director, Ken Wong. “It seems to have changed in 10 years as much as America has in the past 40.” McGee and Wong, started boutique studio dubbed “Spicy Horse†or “Ma La Ma†in Chinese. Initially, they worked out of their homes on an island off the Hong Kong coast. “We moved into some really low-rent warehouse space in Shanghai upon our initial landing in the mainland,” says McGee. “From there we moved a few more times, ever growing the company, taking on more people, and evolving the culture.”
Be sure to check out the full article.
Many thanks to Brian for crafting such a cool article. And thanks to Kotaku readers for supporting interesting interviews like this 🙂
Our Man Tyler
“Captive Audience” doesn’t cover it.
It’s always exciting at this time of year as we watch the fun unfold at 2008’s E3. I mentioned a couple of days ago that Grimm was mentioned as part of the gallery of awesome art work in the In the Pixel exhibition, but now we’re once again having one of our artists mentioned by name. In USA Today, Tyler Lockett’s Rapunzel warranted a specific comment in the article from the exhibition’s curator, Louis Marchesano. How cool is that?!?
Could this be the pinnacle of our young hero’s success? Could there be more? Will he ever discover the identity of his arch-mnemeses? Tune in… soon… ish… to see if this is indeed the end of the line for this year’s horn-tooting. (I highly doubt it.)
If you’d like to see more coverage of E3 by the fine folks at USA Today, head on over there. Their bloggers are working round the clock to bring YOU the bestest news firstest.
Or, if you’d just like to look at the pretty pictures, you can.
In the Pixel, it’s the Bomb
he haz a sad
If you remember the Ars Technica article from June 13th, you’ll remember that they loved our artwork. In fact, one of the things that is setting Grimm apart from most other games is its uniquely stylized presentation. “It’s the Unreal 3 Engine, but you’d never know it from the style…” How many times have we heard that? Well, the upshot is that with E3 underway, Ars Technica visited our lovely name again in a gallery presentation of In the Pixel, an annual show of artwork from and for video games.
As though that weren’t enough (and this is a week late, but worth the mention),Giant Bomb gave us a happy mention in their weekly podcast of July 8th. They enjoyed saying the name “Spicy Horse” (and who doesn’t?), they found the game-play simple but engaging, and they really enjoyed how the objects in each scene morphed into their dark aspects instead of “blinking”. (We like that, too.) Each GiantBomb podcast is around two hours long, but worth the listen. If you just want to hear them talk about us, it starts at around 18 minutes or so and goes on for a few. (As yet another aside, GiantBomb.Com has a new format coming with a community-based review system for games, kind of like a wiki except much, much cooler. You’ll hear all about it in the podcast.)
Less than two week away is the launch. Do you know where your juggling pig is?