GamePlasma was recently given the opportunity to sit down with American McGee. For those of you who are unfamiliar with American McGee, he started his work over at id Software on games such as Quake and Doom. Shortly after his work at id, American McGee developed what could be considered one of the unique first person shooters of the day, American McGee's Alice.
Currently, American McGee is working on a new episodic adventure titled American McGee's Grimm. The first episode, A Boy Learns What Fear Is, is set for release July 31st and will be permanently free to play on GameTap.com. The other episodes in the series will all be free to play for the first 24 hours when they are released.
You can check out the full interview after the jump.
Interview: American McGee Talks Grimm
Tuesday, July 30, 2008 – by Ryan Lodata, Executive Editor
American McGee Talks Grimm with GamePlasma
1) Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work within the
industry?
My name is American McGee and I'm the Creative Director and founder of a
game studio in Shanghai, China called "Spicy Horse Games". I've been
making games for 15 years now - starting back at id Software in the DOOM
and Quake days. I also spent some years working for Electronic Arts
where I built a dark interpretation of "Alice in Wonderland". These days
my focus is on building innovative games with the team here in Shanghai.
Our hope is to become a world-class development studio producing content
for the Western and Chinese markets.
2) Where did your inspiration for creating dark versions of common
childhood stories come from? Was there something in particular that
sparked your interest in stories such as Alice or the Grimm collections?
I've always been attracted to darkly imaginative narratives, characters,
and locales. Children's tales frequently contain the wildest visions and
imaginings - woven inside stories that deal with age-old beliefs,
lessons, and truths. As a medium, video games have tremendous
possibility for range of visuals, sounds, immersion. But too often it
seems that the technology is leveraged to recreate known realities or
times. Personally, I'd rather see the technology leveraged to transport
us to places more interesting to imagine than a WW2 battlefield or Space
Marine training camp. So, I focus my work on the rich universe of fairy
tales and children's stories.
"I've always been attracted to darkly imaginative narratives, characters,
and locales."
3) In the past, the games you have worked on were standard length video
games. How has the move to these much shorter games affected your work?
Typical games average between 8 and 16 hours of game play - depending on
how they're played. Grimm is no different in that respect: it delivers
12 hours of game play content, only that content is broken into 24
episodes of :30 minutes length. We've seen testers enjoy a single
episode for an hour or more - so the total amount of game content
compares with typical box product game offerings. What makes Grimm
different is the release timing. Instead of waiting till all the content
is ready to be packaged together in a single box, we start releasing
episode content as soon as it's ready.
In terms of how this impacts our work, I feel it has created massive
benefits for our production model and team. For one, we've never
suffered a crunch time or missed milestone. This is owing to the fact
that the individual tasks for completing an episode are broken into such
small chunks. Everyone working on an episode knows exactly (sometimes to
the hour) how much time is available to finish a certain asset, texture,
or level building phase. When our schedule slips, it happens in terms of
days, not weeks or months. And recovery is usually managed with ease.
For me, the episodic development model has been a dream come true. And
the team has learned a lot of cool lessons that we can apply to future
develops - whether or not those are episodic.
4) Which of Grimm's Fairy Tales would you say was your favorite to work
on and why?
The classic tales like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood offer a certain
amount of appeal simply because they are so well known. Seeing an
interaction between "famous" characters, but rendered in the Grimm
narrative style is always fun. But, to be honest, some of my favorite
bits of character interaction and game play have come from some of the
less known tales. Unfortunately, because we've not yet announced all of
our upcoming tales I can't say which is my favorite! You'll just have to
wait for it to be released on GameTap.
"Little Red Riding Hood before American got to it."
5) As compared to Alice, it appears that Grimm has been toned down in
the sense of how "dark" it is. Was this the result of trying to target a
younger audience?
That was never our intention. We started Grimm development with an "M"
rated product in mind, but owing to the cartoon art style, comedic
nature of many of our character interaction, and base tales that we're
dealing with, ended up delivering pretty "cute" content. Still, there's
a lot of cartoon blood and violence in each episode. I imagine that must
episodes will rank a "T" rating, with a few grabbing an "M" for really
over-the-top content.
Still, if a younger audience is able to access the content, that's a
great thing for the product. I'm happy we were given the range and
freedom to go for an "M" and then end up with a "T".
Makes me wonder... if "Alice" was rated again today, would it take an
"M"? My feeling is it wouldn't.
6) Do you have anything else in the works with GameTap other than Grimm?
We'd love to do another game with GameTap. They've been the best
publisher I've ever worked with. As I've stated many times, the Spicy
Horse team is really thankful for the opportunity they offered to build
a studio, develop truly unique content, and test an innovative
distribution model. If we could do it again, we would.
"Grimm will be 3 volumes of several episodes."
7) Do you see yourself creating another Alice game?
Wouldn't that be fun? I'd do it in a heartbeat. The question is: Would
EA?
8) What story have you always wanted to make a game out of, but haven't
had the chance?
I'm really itching to do a full-blown "Red Riding Hood" themed game. And
I've worked on a variety of ideas with my Art Director, Ken Wong, for a
while now. You can see one image on my flickr account, here:
http://flickr.com/photos/americanmcgee/215853452/
You'll also find a ton of cool Grimm concept artwork in my photostream
on Flickr. Be sure to check it out!
