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Tribes Franchise Quietly Strangled
Gavin Manley writes "Back in October last year, the third game in the Tribes series of first person shooters was released, published by Vivendi Universal Games (VUG). After many years of waiting and frustration, VU once again disappoints, not only by missing their market for the game again but by simply cancelling support for the game." From the article: "Now not only does this have consequences for Tribes fans, but fans of other franchises need to be worried. SWAT 4 in particular. The next SWAT game is also being produced by Irrational Games (no doubt on an equally dismal budget) and published by our good friends at VUG."
* Presses 'V' *
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jmole: Shazbot!
aah, nothing quite like seeing a good game series destroyed by a publisher that cares about nothing but profit. Everyone remember the tribes 2 fiasco? It went something like this:
Dynamix: Tribes 2 isn't ready, we need to delay it.
Vivendi: Release the game now.
Dynamix: It's not ready.
Vivendi: We don't care, release the game now.
Dynamix: Okay.
Vivendi: This game sucks. No ones buying it, and those who did are returning it.
Dynamix: We told you the game wasn't ready.
Vivendi: You're fired.
Aah, what a brilliant and refreshing management strategy. Is anyone really surprised that tribes 3 was a dismal failure?
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Tribes, on balance, was made measurably worse by the community.
I'm not just talking about griefers, lamers and TKers; that's universal and understandable. I'm also talking about server admins and modders. There were some fantastic mods floating about out there--well thought-out, balanced mods that made the game substantially different, better and/or cooler. There were also some decent but decidedly less-thought out mods out there, mods which nerfed heavies/snipers/pilots/etc, mods which made weapons entirely too deadly, mods which presented poorly planned, poorly executed maps, mods that futzed with physics in a way that was amusing for five minutes then tedious--you've played 'em. What's more, there were junior modders who'd take a good mod and add their own little melange of spices, spawning 'renegades' variants and the like.
All well and good, but once this got underway, it became a serious challenge to find a decent game to join. The vast majority of servers would be running some mod or other--and if you didn't know the mod, you'd get your ass handed to you on a silver platter for several hours until you learned all the various idiosyncrasies therein. Other servers required client-side downloads--a real annoyance when all you want to do is hop on a game and play. It was not uncommon to find only two or three servers running a "standard" game--and these servers would generally either be packed to capacity or dead empty.
I know it's not cool to rail on the community, but I honestly think that it played a real role in making the game less playable overall. Yes, there are tons of other factors in play--for example, Dynamix/VU could have shelled out for a couple dozen dedicated base servers. Yes, I could have S'ed the FU and run my own server (which I did for some time back in the day, by the way--admittedly with my own half-baked mod...) Yes, a number of clans did original, stunning, amazing work worthy of mountains of praise. But when it comes right down to it, I really think that Tribes as a game was hurt more than it was helped by the community at large.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Maybe the folks at Vivendi are experiencing the same problem that EA identified earlier in the week - World of Warcraft is so damned popular that it wrecked everyone else's holiday sales, and is continuing to hold the interest of gamers, who continue to not buy new games. VU is certainly no stranger to this problem - Starcraft and Half-Life (Well, Countrstrike anyway), both VU distributed titles, have been biting into sales for years. Everquest has also been noted as a title that eats away at the market for years.
Perhaps the reason VU is pushing WoW so hard, both in the US and internationally, while cutting funds to other games, is that the execs have realized that VUs most successful games will continue to cannibalize other game sales, so it's better to just push on with a guaranteed cash cow.