'Nobody in the team wanted to call this game Prey,' says Prey's creative director

techradar.com:

The developers of sci-fi FPS Prey weren’t happy with the game’s name, and the decision to tie it into the Prey IP partly fuelled its creative director’s departure from the studio he founded.

Released in 2017, Prey shares its name with a little-known 2006 FPS developed by Human Head Studios. Despite sharing few similarities with that game, it was billed as a reimagining of the Prey intellectual property, which was held by publisher Bethesda. But creative director and Arkane founder Raphaël Colantonio said the name was forced on the team, who didn’t like it.

“I was a little at odds with some of the management with the decision of calling Prey ‘Prey’,” said Colantonio, speaking to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. “That was very, very hurtful to me. I did not want to call this game Prey, and I had to say I wanted to anyway in front of journalists. 

“I hate to lie, and those are sales lies – it’s not a personal lie – but it still felt bad. 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, but it was kind of like Prey [2006] in a way.

“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. But there is a bit of the artist, the 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'.” 

Colantonio highlighted the naming dispute as typical of the “corporate world” of game development. Not only a creative oversight, Prey’s name was a commercial blunder, he says. it failed to stir excitement among potential players, as well as souring the way fans of the 2006