By Luke Reilly

A fresh trademark spotted here on the World Intellectual Property Organization’s site (via Eurogamer) appears to indicate Fox’s next Alien video game will be called Alien: Blackout.

The trademark overtly specifies video games as the classification, not a film.

The emergence of the trademark filing coincides with a peculiar exchange between Hideo Kojima and The Game Awards official Twitter account, following a visit by Kojima to 20th Century Fox where he posed with an Alien egg and poster.

In early November The Game Awards producer Geoff Keighley posted an image on Twitter featuring a slab of text repeating (almost) the same phrase: worlds will change.

Enthusiastic fans have subsequently pointed out the retro font in Keighley’s image is strikingly similar to that of the sinister Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the Alien universe’s infamously reckless and profit-hungry mega-corp. Weyland-Yutani’s company slogan is “Building Better Worlds” and it’s traditionally included as part of its logo.

In January this year FoxNext Games announced its acquisition of Cold Iron Studios and confirmed the studio would be developing a new PC and console shooter based on the Alien cinematic universe. The January announcement made mention of an “action-packed persistent world” but, beyond that, there’s no real information yet about what sort of experience Cold Iron Studios’ Alien game will be. It’s possible Alien: Blackout is Cold Iron Studios’ game, though it’s also possible it’s an unrelated project.

The Game Awards will take place on December 6 at 8:30 PM ET / 5:30 PM PT (December 7 at 1:30 AM GMT / 12:30 PM AEDT). Prepare your nukes, knives, and sharp sticks.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.