Hvordan en Valve Tech-demo utløste American McGees Alice – og hans avgang fra id Software

American McGee, creator of American McGee's Alice, traced the origin of the game directly to a demo he watched during Quake 2's production at id Software. McGee shared the story in a recent post on X, responding to a clip of gameplay from Alice posted by another user.

McGee began at id in tech support before becoming a level designer on Doom, Quake, and Quake 2. During Quake 2's development, the entire team crowded into designer Paul Steed's office to watch footage of what Valve was building on id's engine. The demo was not Half-Life — McGee clarified in a reply to a user who challenged the account on X that what they watched was internal experimental work: tools Valve was constructing that would eventually feed into Half-Life's development.

"There was this one time at id Software when we were working on Quake 2 and everyone piled into Paul Steed's office to check out what Valve was doing was our tech. And there was a cinematic scene with characters moving around while a crane operating and multiple cameras panning around to convey some element of the narrative. Proper cinematic storytelling using the Quake engine!"

— American McGee

McGee reacted audibly. The room turned and scowled at him.

"And I let out a breathless 'WOW.' The whole room turned around and scowled at me. Ha. That was the moment I knew, 'OK, well. I want to tell stories with this tech. And these guys don't.'"

— American McGee

I think the scowl says more than any official explanation has: it put into physical terms a creative split that would take another year to formalize.

McGee was fired in October '98, roughly ten months after Quake 2 shipped in December 1997. John Carmack addressed the separation in a plan file, stating McGee's contributions spanned Doom 2, Quake, and Quake 2, but that id "were not seeing what we wanted." Former designer Sandy Peterson later suggested McGee had been treated unfairly by a colleague, and no formal account has resolved the contradiction between the two versions.

McGee described his reaction to the firing in the same X post.

"That was why, on the day I was fired from id, I first cried... and then driving home with a box of my crap in the trunk of the car, I began smiling. Then laughing. And the first chance I was given to do something on my own with that tech? Well, I pushed it as hard as I could in relation to surreal visuals and cinematic storytelling."

— American McGee

He joined EA and developed American McGee's Alice with Rogue Entertainment, released in December 2000. Speaking from an interview with him back in 2000, McGee described the split from id in a single sentence:

"We had a difference of opinion (more than one, actually), so I left."

— American McGee

EA gave him room to develop Alice without interfering with its content or creative direction, which McGee confirmed in the same interview. After Alice, he moved to China, founded Spicy Horse, and developed the sequel Alice: Madness Returns in 2011. EA rejected a third Alice game in 2023, and McGee announced his retirement from game development, but reversed course earlier this year, confirming in a statement on Patreon his return to build a spiritual successor to the series.

I know that American McGee's Alice never broke through commercially at launch, yet the series has sustained active fan interest for 26 years — long enough to justify an entirely new IP built from its existing player base.

Read also, American McGee's new project, Plushie Dreadfuls, follows an orphan named James entangled with the Plushie Dreadfuls toy family and ties directly to the ending of Alice: Madness Returns. McGee created the IP independently to sidestep EA's rights over the Alice series.