1995 was a year when the competition between iD software and 3D Realms was heating up. The two former shareware developers were part of a gaming revival and both companies were trying hard to outdo each other. The fact that iD were working on Quake tipped the balance towards the creation of a dark Sci-Fi game and that was when Prey was born. The team behind the game decided to build a new engine for it from scratch and work begun.
Prey was quickly subtitled You are and You’d Better and the first previews arrived in spring 1996. The future was looking rosy for our young Apache, Talon became Tommy and a Cherokee later on, until Black Monday (8/12/1996) when almost the entire team quit and left the company.
The aliens look familiar…only Sigourney can save us
George Broussard, 3D Realms co-owner reacted instantly be announcing job openings and insisted that Prey development would continue. The team quickly grew in numbers and between 1997 and 1998 progress on the game was rapid. E3 1997 was the first major appearance of the game through a non-interactive demo. The public and critics reacted well to what they saw and innovations such as the destructible environments were greeted with excitement. As Prey was one of the next-generation of 3D games, a 3D accelerator card was a requirement, a move that was considered risky at the time but one which truly placed the title at the cutting edge of video game technology. Prey was quickly dubbed; Quake Killer.
Following the success of E3 1997, a set of decisions were made regarding the details of the game. The aliens were modeled on Larry Niven’s concept, as it was developed in his book Ringworld, a book which also served as inspiration for a little known game by Bungie called Halo.
E3 1998 saw the release of a more professional non-interactive demo and the first mentions of a 1998 release were made. Then, on 10/13/1998 George Broussard announced that the two main members of the development team, Paul Schuytema and William Scarboro, had left. The future of the game was again in doubt and most of the Prey team were moved on to Duke Nukem Forever.
There would be little action surrounding Prey until late 2001 when Human Head Studios took over the project. Oddly enough fans and most of the press were not aware that development on Prey was going on until an announcement on 4/15/2005.
Prey Tell