News American McGee reveals Grimm

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/05/17/american_mcgee_reveals_grimm/1



American Mcgee, who earned acclaim as a level designer for Quake and Doom at id Software, has announced via his blog that he working on a new game to be released through GameTap.

 

Looks like a good way to get a few laughs.


Sell also: Uncharted

 

I don't mind episodes as long as they can actually get them all out. No more Sin Episodes BS. This also may make me sign up for gametap, for a short time, to check these out. Along with Sam & Max, of course.

 

Episodes are a good idea if the regularity of release is ok. The problem is that computer game development is renowned for suffering from delays, it's just part of the process. For none episodic games, it doesn't really matter, as long as the marketing is well timed and the end product basically meets expectations, e.g. Stalker.

With episodic content though, regardless of the qualtity of the produce, delays will unavoiadably damage the popularity of the games, so it's a risk attempting game development in this manner.

For something like Sam n Max, it was probably a good idea, but whoever thought a technology pushing game like Half-Life 2, which already suffered delays before the main game shipped, would be right for episodes is an idiot, they were bound to suffer delays and must have realised they couldn't deliver.

I bet Valve were just terrified of HL2 becoming 'last year's game', they wanted to keep it in the public limelight, regardless of the risks involved. I'd much rather they'd finished where HL2 finished, then released all three episodes as HL3 in a couple of years time, filling the gap in the middle with stuff like Portal and Team Fortress 2.


Re: the news though, excellent stuff, the design in Alice was flawless. True the gameplay was a little run of the mill, but the art and the style more than made up for it. What ever happened to the animated movie of Alice, with Sarah Michelle Gellar as the lead vocal?

 

It's in developement (the movie), thought not as an animation apparently, will SMG still attached as the lead role.

 

You are a fountain of knowledge Mr. Jonsophong.