Spicy Horse is moving into free-to-play online games

Alice: Madness Returns developer Spicy Horse will be working on drastically different games going forward. The studio has received $3 million in funding from Vickers Venture Partners and will be working alongside PopCap Games to create a 3D online version of one of PopCap’s titles for an initial release in Asia.

“The sense is that while a lot of social games have built their empires on 2D, there will be a moment where the genre has to shift into 3D, and we want to start that process now,” American McGee tells Gamasutra. Spicy Horse is “definitely going to be about free-to-play online multiplayer games.”

Describing Madness Returns as a “beautiful distraction,” McGee says “The reason I originally came to China is that I wanted to get into that new model — I wanted to get away from console game production and retail, disc-based sales.”

American McGee’s Spicy Horse Gets $3M Funding, Signs PopCap Deal [Gamasutra]