Alice to cost $15 million, Spicy Horse to double size in next 18 months

Spicy Horse boss American McGee said today the China-based developer will expand from 80 to 160 staff in the next year-and-a-half.

The company, currently working on Alice: Madness Returns for EA, will expand to take advantage of an exploding online games scene in China, which is projected to double to $10 billion by 2014.

“The whole reason I came to China was I could see six years ago that the Western game-development and publishing model was starting to break down and malfunction,” McGee, who founded Spicy Horse in 2006, told Bloomberg.

“I wanted to be in China to gain access to what was happening in online games production, and monetization.”

Alice: Madness Returns, is to cost "about half the $30 million that such a title might have cost in the US," according to that report.

The game's releasing in 2011 for PC, 360 and PS3. Get the latest trailer and screens here.