Ex-Bethesda Boss Fought Hard For Prey To Be Called Anything But Prey

By Quinton O'Connor

Published 6 hours ago

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If Pete Hines had his way, Prey would not have been Prey. Arkane Studios' 2017 science-fiction shooter sim was barely related to 2006's FPS from the now-defunct Human Head Studios, which was slated to receive a cool-looking sequel, but the project was unceremoniously canceled a few years after the Prey IP's rights transferred over to Bethesda Softworks.

In other words, Bethesda's own unique spin on Prey faced an incredibly uphill marketing battle. Fans of the original game, understandably upset that its sequel had been canned, were in an uproar over the fact that a name they'd come to love was strapped to a game that looked almost nothing like it. Everybody was too busy trying to explain why Prey (2017) took the same name as Prey (2006), but wasn't really like that all, but also was, sort of, and also not, and... well, Bethesda's former Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications thought the whole thing was absurd.

Prayers Left Unanswered

Prey screenshots of multiple mimics swarming down a tunnel toward the screen.

"I definitely pissed some people off internally over that because I fought so hard against using that name," Pete Hines reveals in an interview with DBLTAP. (Thanks for the spot on this one, GameSpot.) "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."

"I regret that I lost that battle." -Pete Hines

It fired Hines up almost as much as Fallout 76's canvas bag debacle did. Arkane wasn't particularly interested in referring to their upcoming space-set, alien-fighting project as Prey. Bethesda wasn't interested. They had the rights to the IP, and I guess that was that, no matter how much Pete Hines thought it silly. "My whole point was, look how much time we spend talking about what the game is versus why it's called this and like, this is wasted energy. That is wasted excitement. We could be turning that into something positive."

Indeed, many of us recall Prey's marketing period in the same dim view. When it launched, Prey quickly proved to be a phenomenal immersive sim. Unfortunately, it was never able to establish itself, which undoubtedly factored into its middling sales performance. While we'll probably never know just how middling, there were red flags following launch, including Arkane Studios' founder - who served as Prey's director - resigning shortly thereafter.