American McGee Unleashes BaiJiu Racer

American McGee, whose previous projects include Alice, Bad Day LA and Grimm, is announcing that it plans to create a racing game with a MMO component called BaiJiu Racer.

In an interesting move, the pitch for the game was made directly via a website. As McGee explains, “Traditionally, when I’ve pitched game concepts, the process involved face-to-face meetings with potential publishers, use of our agents (CAA) back in Los Angeles, and lots of traveling. Well, I’m getting old, China is FAR from the rest of the world, and the Internet can do a lot of amazing things, so here’s a game pitch for the next generation”.

BaiJiu Racer is set to be, in the tradition of Eastern MMOs, free-to-play. It will encourage players to get into the racing section and see how they fare. Microtransactions will be offered to those who are interested in customizing their characters and seeing more of the game, although probably no gameplay advantage will be obtained by paying more. The game will be aimed at casual gamers who enjoy easily understandable game mechanics.

The presentation says that Spicy Horse studio will partner up with ICEE, a publisher based in China, for this project. The art style will be distinctively Chinese and the gameplay will be classic racing, with power ups added for good measure but without any overpowered feature. The developers say that the game will have a “strong narrative backbone and emotional drama”, which is unusual for a racing game. It will be created using the wildly popular Unreal 3 engine.

Them aim is to create a game which can compete with Mario Kart, one of the biggest casual racing franchises out there, and American McGee says it plans to make sure that the Chinese roots of the game are a key to its future success.