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The developer of Alice: Madness Returns has criticised the game’s publisher EA for its handling of the title.
What was 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),” he stated in a Reddit AMA.
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.”
Or it could be, of course, that EA was simply looking for a way to sell the game that wasn’t play Alice in Wonderland in third person 3D!”. Because that would have been rubbish.
It could be argued that EA’s creative marketing of the title was far more compelling than the 70 per cent scoring title itself.
