How Alice: Madness Returns Found New Life on the Internet Long After the Departure of Its Creator

If Alice: Madness Returns was dead on arrival, that would at least be aesthetically consistent.

The 2011 sequel to American McGee's Alice went even deeper into Alice in Wonderland's red guts than the first game, pulling out the most nightmarish aspects of the Victorian children's story and tying their shadows into a neat action-adventure. But it suffered from abysmal launch sales, with reviewers and fans both being disappointed by what they felt were rough controls and level design.

Still, game designer American McGee wasn't giving up.

McGee, who created the series after being fired by id Software, hoped to gather enough community support for a follow-up, and the most diehard Alice believers gave it to him in spades. But after a decade of this cutting fan pressure, publisher EA finally made a decision in 2023: there would be no more Alice games. They blamed the "analysis of the IP" and market conditions.

Was it all over? Would Alice have to lie facedown in the graveyard once and for all? Not exactly. Alice: Madness Returns doesn't just live, it thrives.

"Even though EA was going to let Alice die," says 33-year-old Twitch streamer Foxfire47, who has been a fan of the series since the first game released in 2000, "the fans were absolutely not."

She credits Madness Returns’ lively online fanbase to McGee himself. He began working on a proposal for a potential follow-up, Alice: Asylum, in 2017, and encouraged fans to contact EA directly to show their support. His now retired Patreon contains all the other ways he incentivized fans to deepen their obsession, like referring to the fandom as "Insane Children" and eventually posting an Alice: Asylum design bible bursting with art.

His otherworldly design is at least one reason why fans could never truly abandon Madness Returns, or the Alice series in general. They are a gorgeous testament to the fact that anyone can survive the worst thing that's ever happened to them.

Friendships and bonds

Foxfire47 discovered Madness Returns' online fan base through McGee's Patreon in 2018. She remembers feeling McGee’s excitement for Asylum bleeding into her preexisting enthusiasm for the series, and it did the same for everyone she met over Patreon and Discord.

"Friendships and bonds were made through Alice: Asylum," Foxfire47 says.

When EA ultimately passed on the project, they were also rejecting an entire community that had put years and money into materializing a shared dream. But McGee had trained his fans to become personally invested, and an IP issue seemed small in the face of their dedication.

"After [EA rejected Asylum]," Foxfire47 says, "I feel that, as fans for Alice, we wanted to keep the spirit of the games alive. With the camaraderie of this community, we are always going to show our love for these games."

The community now sustains Madness Returns through YouTube videos with millions of views, pouty TikTok fancams with hundreds of thousands of likes, detailed cosplay, tattoos, and other tangible methods of worship. All of this online word-of-mouth has helped Alice fans succeed in an unprecedented goal. They are actively collecting new fans for an abandoned, 24-year-old franchise telling the strange horror story of an orphan teenager, Alice, who retreats into an hallucinated Wonderland.

"I bought Alice: Madness Returns, and I’m playing the first one for the first time because of your cosplay!" one commenter recently told popular TikTok cosplayer Jessilyn Cupcake. In recent years, she's made and shared several Alice cosplays with her eager followers, including Alice's ultramarine tea dress and the yowling Hobby Horse hammer from Madness Returns. She first found Madness Returns in 2011, telling IGN that she "fell in love immediately.”

"It still feels modern and a fresh take despite being 15 years old," Jessilyn says. "I think [its] hack-and-slash-style gameplay with multiple weapons, costumes, and abilities is one of the best examples in a game, ever."

The game is an intoxicating blend of deadly and delicate, much like its most famous weapon, the lace-patterned Vorpal Blade – a chef's knife for short-range combat. In Madness Returns, traumatized 19-year-old Alice must take on the child sex trafficker and psychiatrist Dr. Bumby, who tries to trick her into madness in order to commodify her body. But Alice learns to wield her fragile power against any abomination.

Alice's ability to work through her pain and tackle any problem, from baby dolls that vomit to dangerous men, is part of her underdog appeal. And McGee accessorizes Alice's hypnotic visions with touches like the creamy, white bow behind her bloodspattered apron, and the crystal-blue butterflies in the misty, tree-covered Vale of Tears.