2017’s Prey had nothing to do with the existing Prey game or its canceled sequel, leading fans to wonder why the game was even called that. As it turns out, former Bethesda marketing boss Pete Hines fought against going with that name.
“I definitely pissed some people off internally over that because I fought so hard against using that name. I’m the head of the spear, but I had a lot of people across my team–brand, PR and community–and we feel like we’re burdening it with a name where we spend more time explaining why it’s called Prey than we do talking about the game,” he told dbltap. “I regret that I lost that battle.”
Hines went on to say that nobody on Earth fought harder than he did on the effort of “changing minds on that,” but he ultimately didn’t get his way. He was so fired up about it because he believed the company was wasting time and energy explaining the game’s title instead of selling people on the game.
Raphael Colantonio, the game’s director, previously told GameSpot that the name makes sense thematically, even if the game has no direct connection to the original Prey game or its scrapped sequel.
“Well, it was a matter of, first of all it’s hard to find a name for a game, and it’s a good name–sounds good,” he said in 2016. “I think the association that people have about Prey is that it’s about aliens on a space station, and it’s a first-person game. As we started it, the name was available, and the connections were easy to be made. We just thought, ‘Okay, makes sense,’ so there we go.”
The “high-level concept” of 2017’s Prey was “similar enough” to the franchise’s roots that it “made sense” to call it that, Colantonio said.
Prey 2 was in development at one point with Human Head Studios attached, however this version of the game was canceled in 2014. The first Prey was released back in 2006 for PC and Xbox 360 by Human Head Studios.
As for Hines, he left Bethesda following Microsoft’s buyout of parent company ZeniMax and is now retired.
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