14 DAY TRIAL // The developers at the American McGee lead Spicy Horse studio might be best known for creating the Alice based video games for publisher Electronic Arts, including the recent Madness Returns, but their new big project is not the traditional game for retail consumption but a Facebook based social experience that is currently called BigHead Bash.
The game will allow players to control a number of different figurines with big heads in a deathmatch, which takes place in a side scrolling environment.
One aspect of the game will be the traditional battles but another important element will be to collect as many figurines as possible, with complete collections giving out bonuses to those who manage the feat.
The game will use the free-to-play and micro transaction system but apparently the company hadn’t though about using it initially.
In an interview with Gamasutra American McGee stated, “The truth is, being a 'traditional' game company, we just started with a gameplay demo built by a two-man prototype team, and left the business model thinking until a much later date.”
Unfortunately the development team failed to fully explore the question of how the video game will make money.
McGee added, “Part-way into production I started pressuring the team to find a theme and make sure that theme linked into a 'monetization narrative.' To me, the idea that we set the game inside a store made a lot of sense-- and it was the 'toy store' theme that I pressed for that reason.”
For fans of the Alice games the Spicy Horse leader has bad news: the company has no plans to return to AAA development at the moment although if BigHead Bash is a success the studio might have the resources to create a social game that uses the Alice mythos and delivers the same violence and over the top action.