The creative freedom part definitely seems true, but according to this Glassdoor review, Arkane Austin experiences crunch:
One review is hardly definitive evidence though.
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Prey 2 (Human Head) Prototype Footage
- Thread starter Deleted member 7450
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One review is hardly definitive evidence though.
I suspect part of the pain was building a company up from nothing with years of effort, blood n' tears, only to have some corporation come in and say they'll give you a buck to save it because they're choking it to death. The founders at Human Head have a lot of heart. Letting Zenimax buy them out would mean they'd have spend the rest of their company's life doing exactly what Zenimax wanted. Look at Arkane... I can't imagine they wanted their Systemshock game to be overshadowed by a title that had nothing to do with all their effort.
If Zenimax had stopped being asses and let Prey 2 which had created a unique market presence be finished, you'd probably have Prey 3 in your hands right now. Pete Hines' commentary dances a silly legal line. I'm sure he's a nice guy outside of the hat he wears. He's the only one that's said anything about on Bethesda's side for what happened to Prey 2, just enough to satisfy the curious who have faith big companies have heart for creators.
Kickstarter and the like has this mystical solution to people who haven't worked in games. It's true it can generate money. It can't generate enough for a AAA game though, only enough to help shave off the sharp edges. If Prey 2 was given to Human Head by Bethesda, then Kickstarter would've paid to finish it. Starting a new game though won't be enough to just make a game from scratch. Prey 2's marketing alone was $16 million or something, which was more than what I believe Zenimax paid to make the game. Has any game on Kickstarter surpassed $30 million?
The video looks like it's from an animator's demo reel which was focused on shuffling through animations and not pacing out the combat. And remember, this was Pre-Alpha footage which hadn't been balanced to user-tests. Plus, this was footage from almost a decade ago. A lot of what I feel was happening in the special sauce was years before other things released would become the norm. Remaking Prey 2 right now with the same formula would feel tired by the time it came out.
Prey 2's story tied right into the original Prey, with the original protagonist Tommy, original villains, and a Sphere showing up. I sort of equate Prey vs Prey 2 to Star Wars: A New Hope vs. Empire Strikes back had Han Solo instead of Luke been given the spotlight. Then again, Han only had a small part of screentime with Luke, the rest of it was without Skywalker.
If you include all their other crowdfunding sources, then Star Citizen, but you're right in that's very much an anomaly. According to a former Bethesda marketing guy's Linkedin, Prey 2's marketing budget was $15 million.
With the Utah event, E3, PAX, Quakecon, Gamescom, and the live action teaser and the Blur trailer, they definitely spent some major cash. Here's a banner they had at E3 2011:
Bethesda has given their studios an insane amount of creative freedom. Do you think Activision, EA, Ubisoft, 2K or any other publisher would have funded multiple AAA immersive sims? Or survival horror games? In the past 6 years, Bethesda has introduced several new IPs and essentially resurrected several others. You say "look at Arkane." Well, yes, we should look at Arkane. If Bethesda hadn't acquired them, they'd very likely be dead. I'm pretty sure Arkane isn't complaining too much about having to name their game "Prey" when they still got the opportunity to make a big-budget spiritual successor to System Shock.
At the end of the day, publishers bear all the risk when it comes to game development. Developers get paid for just making the game. Publishers only make money if the game sells enough to overcome development and marketing costs. Publishers cancel games all the time. They just typically do it before the game is announced. The leadership at HH should have read the writing on the wall and looked at the direction the industry was headed. Instead, they clung to their pride, got their game canceled, let people go and ended up doing some ports and mobile games. If you're running a business, you need to do what's best for your business and HH didn't do that.
OP
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Bethesda could've allowed then to go on, just saying.
"Either sell or we pull the plug" is the hostile behaviour Bethesda is known for. That isn't business, is bullying.
Uh, I don't think pride was to blame. More like the owners had experienced first-hand at Raven what happens when a publisher buys your studio and, since that was the catalyst for setting out as an indie, decided against aligning themselves with a company like Zenimax, knowing that if things got desperate enough they could team up or sell to another developer instead. Despite an out of date Wikipedia page, Human Head currently employs over 60 developers, and post-Prey 2, they haven't just worked on ports and mobile games. They've been a support studio on Bioshock: Infinite, World of Tanks, Call of Duty, and a bunch of stuff for Square-Enix, shipped Timegate's Minimum, while partnering with Digital Extremes and Epic on some exciting projects. You have to be versatile to survive, and they've done that for over 20 years, which is a rare thing for independent developers. I hope Rune, which is a licence they own, works out for them.
Raven was acquired by Activision in 1997 and they made a lot of good stuff before eventually being turned into a CoD support team. Heretic 2, Soldier of Fortune 1 & 2, Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, Wolfenstein, Singularity, Star Trek: Elite Force, X-Men: Legends 1 & 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Quake 4, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, etc. The Human Head founders left Raven immediately after it was sold so it's not like they were reacting to anything that Activision had done. In addition, Raven's output after the acquisition was far more impressive than Human Head's output. Did they primarily make licensed games? Sure, but if those licenses are Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men, Quake, Wolfenstein and Marvel, it's hard to complain.
It seems like Human Head just has a history of poor business decisions. In 2011, publishers were clearly moving away from the work-for-hire market and focusing instead on internal development. Between 2009 and 2010, Bethesda acquired Arkane, id, Tango Gameworks and Machine Games. That would have been the perfect time to sell to Bethesda, like the other studios had already done. Instead, Human Head clung to their pride and remained "independent" (something of a misnomer since they still depended on publishers to throw them scraps). If the new Rune is massively successful, maybe their dream of becoming truly independent and working on completely self-funded, original AAA games will come to fruition. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
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Thanks for making me sad... I was really looking forward to this game.
All these "I'm glad that this got cancelled so that we'd get Prey 2017" are depressing as an Arkane fanboy who loved their Prey and didn't even play Human Head's.
All you're saying is that you're glad that Prey 2017 is called Prey 2017, not that you're glad tha the game exists, it was gonna happen regardless and I would rather live in a world where both did.
All you're saying is that you're glad that Prey 2017 is called Prey 2017, not that you're glad tha the game exists, it was gonna happen regardless and I would rather live in a world where both did.
Silent hills and this will always hurt but I don't know I love the prey game we managed to get, but people Arkane would have for sure put out their system shock game but it would have a different name.
I still remember the big game informer spread and the e3 demos.
Tommy was going to be in the last 1/3 of the game, most of it was cool ground level existential science fiction like bladerunner and then it links back to the first game from the new characters perspective.
Honestly it sounded great and looked like ass since it was based on a heavily modified idtech3 or 4, which ever powered doom 3, quake iv, prey, and wolfenstein 2009.
But what was great about it was the art direction and promise of gameplay.
That said Arkanes game is something special either way I just wish, like silent hills, we would have gotten them both.
I still remember the big game informer spread and the e3 demos.
Tommy was going to be in the last 1/3 of the game, most of it was cool ground level existential science fiction like bladerunner and then it links back to the first game from the new characters perspective.
Honestly it sounded great and looked like ass since it was based on a heavily modified idtech3 or 4, which ever powered doom 3, quake iv, prey, and wolfenstein 2009.
But what was great about it was the art direction and promise of gameplay.
That said Arkanes game is something special either way I just wish, like silent hills, we would have gotten them both.
How anyone can stand up for what Bethesda/Zenimax did, I don't know.
Aside from the paragraphs I wrote already explaining why, there's also the fact that none of the speculation about HH's supposed ordeal with Zenimax has actually been verified. It's entirely possible that HH was actually behind schedule and over-budget and Zenimax simply cancelled the game because they weren't seeing the kind of progress they wanted. That happens all the time. Maybe Zenimax was willing to make a compromise: continue to fund the game if HH agreed to a buy-out. If HH's management was the source of the issue, buying the studio would allow them to be replaced and get the project back on track.
People outside of game development like to blame publishers for everything. In many cases, the developers (or more specifically, the people managing the developers) are at fault.
Good timing for pushing this info and creating some negative buzz around the "Prey" IP. We're probably seeing some new Prey stuff by Arkane at E3 so let's not forget to emphasize that their Prey isn't the Prey gamers wanted.
I hate this topic and the discussion surrounding it is always kind of marginalizing what Arkane achieved.
I hate this topic and the discussion surrounding it is always kind of marginalizing what Arkane achieved.