When promoting the game, a lot of time had to be spent not on its content, but on explaining the name.
Former Vice President of PR and Marketing at Bethesda, Pete Hines, recently recalled Prey (2017) from Arkane Studios during an interview with dbltap.
The original Prey (2006) was developed by Human Head Studios, and a sequel was supposed to be released for the game, but it didn't work out, and the project was eventually shut down. Years later, Bethesda decided to use the name of the old franchise for a completely different game that had nothing to do with the first part.
Not only Arkane's head, Raphael Colantonio, but also Pete Hines himself opposed the name "Prey", but in the end, they could not achieve a renaming.
According to Hines, the team spent more time explaining why the game is called that than discussing the game itself:
«I definitely angered some people internally because I fought so hard against using that name. I'm the head of the team, but there were a lot of people on my team — brand, PR, and community specialists — and we feel like we're burdening it with a name, spending more time explaining why the game is called \"Prey\" than discussing the game itself. I'm sorry I lost that battle. But no one on this planet would have put in more effort to change their mind about [the choice of the game's name...]».
