As much as I don't care for EA, it sounds to me like American Mcgee is trying to cast blame on other sources for his own failure. Going after the marketing department seems like something being done when they can't blame other more likely things like not being given money, or creative direction (notice he doesn't say he didn't make the game he wanted to). Probably this is a last ditch effort before his newest game under his new Chinese publisher given that his reputation does seem to have suffered more than a bit compared to one-time super stardom.
I find it kind of hilarious to hear someone accusing a company of trying to cater to hardcore horror fans, since that basically doesn't happen. It's very rare when we see things like "Dead Island" and the kind of production and marketing it's been doing. In general you tend to see most "horror" titles casualized, and toned down so as not to offend or disturb anyone, with them being turned almost entirely into "Bro-fest" action games. The typical complaints being that games like "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill" just aren't horror games anymore.
To be honest, I'll say that while "Madness Returns" got some decent review scores, most reviews I read of the game talked about it being repetitive, with you doing the same thing again and again, with a lot of useless weapons tacked on since once you got the pepper-shaker cannon there was little reason to use much else apparently, and apparently a very bad combat system where it was nearly impossible to tell how much damage you were doing to targets, and things like that. My personal observation seemed to be that people were reluctant to slam it too badly because of the "American Mcgee" name, but ultimatly there weren't many people even in "positive" reviews that seemed to be saying how great it was. I'm not saying there weren't any, just not many I ran into.
To be brutally honest, I think if someone DID do a hardcore horror title out of this kind of stuff it would probably sell pretty well, but your not likely to see it specifically because publishers tend not to have the guts. For example if someone was to take the characters and mythology (as far as it went) from Mcfarlane's old "Twisted Land Of Oz" figures with all the sexuality and ultraviolence (Dorothy in bondage gear, etc...) and turn that into a game I could imagine it doing pretty well.
I'll also say that I think the "it's all in her head" thing kind of hurt Alice. See, even in hardcore horror the people watching/reading/playing it typically want the protaganist to survive and be okay.. well if the game is designed correctly and people like their character(s). This adds more impact when things happens to them, and so on. The problem with Alice to an extent is that while it's not hardcore horror, it's ultimatly an exercise in futility, I mean even if you get Alice to lapse back to sanity it's not like we're dealing with a story that is likely to have a happy ending in any way, shape, or form. I think the whole "why bother?" question affected the game, as I hardly to be the only one with these thoughts. Not to mention that places like Oz, Wonderland, etc... tend to be more exciting if they are portrayed as real as opposed to just delusions.... or in short, while not "hardcore" horror, I think as a premise Alice was lacking in any degree of hope. People play video games, even really dark ones, for escapism, while games that are explorations in despair, isolation, and futility, might score high among the arthouse crowd, it's not something that I think can be directed at a mainstream product.
