Raphaël Colantonio, founder of Arkane Studios and creative director of 2017’s Prey, has claimed Bethesda forced developers to tie their game to an existing intellectual property.
The first-person shooter was billed as a “creative reimagining” of the 2006 game of the same name but, according to Colantonia, that was never the intention of developers.
Speaking to the Academy Of Interactive Arts & Sciences Colantonio said (via TechRadar) “I was a little at odds with some of the management with the decision of calling Prey, Prey. 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, not a personal lie, but it still felt bad,” he continued. “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.”
He added: “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 went on to say the decision to tie Prey to a relatively-unknown but pre-existing intellectual property was a commercial blunder. “I hate to be right in this case, but I was right in 10 different ways that this name should never have been the name of the game.”
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“It was also a kick in the face to the original makers of Prey,” Colantonio added. “I wanted to apologise to them many, many times. It never was our intention to ‘steal their IP’ and make it ours. It’s gross. That’s not what I wanted to do. So everybody lost, and [Prey’s] sales were horrible.”
Shortly after the release of Prey, Colantonio left Arkane. “I was like, ‘I’ve gotta go at this point’ because I’m not in control of my own boat.”
In other news, developers at Arkane have spoken about the sheer scale of Redfall’s open-world, with one of its farms bigger than Prey’s entire map.
Redfall is slated to release next year for Xbox Series X|S and PC