Kinda shitty of them.
You might remember Arkane’s 2017 release, Prey, published by Bethesda. And you might have thought “wow, this has nothing to do with Prey“. Which makes sense, as Arkane explicitly stated it had no ties to the 2006 game. So why call it Prey? Well, apparently Bethesda Insisted on it. Because of course they fucking did.
As a matter of fact, Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio gave a recent interview with the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, in which he said their insistence on the name “was very, very hurtful,” and informed his decision to leave Arkane that year after the game’s release.
I did not want to call this game Prey. I had to say I wanted to anyway in front of journalists, which is not my pleasure. I hate to lie. And those are sales lies, it’s not like a personal lie or whatever, but it still felt bad that I had to support a message I did not want. Not only me, but nobody in the team wanted to call this game Prey. Our game had nothing to do with Prey.
I’m grateful that a company will give me the means to make a game and trust my ability with so many millions of dollars, I’m grateful of that—but there is a bit of the artistic, creative side that is insulted when you tell this artist, ‘Your game is going to be called Prey.’ You go like, I don’t think it should, I think it’s a mistake. It’s a sales mistake, because we’re going to get the backfires from the [original Prey fans], these ones are not going to be happy, then the ones who didn’t like Prey, they’re not even going to look for our game, they’re not going to find our game.
So that was part of, ah, I gotta go at this point, because I’m not in control of my own boat at this point.
Raphael Colantonio
It was also something that made him feel the want to apologize to the original game’s team, even though he didn’t want to call the game Prey in the first place.
It never was our intention to steal their IP and make it ours. I was like, it’s gross, that’s not what I wanted to do. And so everybody lost. And the sales were horrible, by the way, of Prey. It was not a good decision.
Raphael Colantonio
Granted, there was a Prey 2 that was in development before this game, as Civvie discussed in his Prey video.
It was canned, though because it wasn’t up to Bethesda’s quality standards. Bethesda‘s quality standards.
While Arkane has moved away from the sorts of games they made while Colantonio was there, like Dishonored and Prey, he’s managed to land on his feet. Notably, his new studio released Weird West earlier this year, refining immersive sim elements to a fine point.
Source: PC Gamer
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