Marweas still hasnt told us about getting fired

My personal opinion was that there were many blatant problems with the physics (I could right a ten page thesis explaining exactly what they are) and that it was under marketed. That said...

I loved playing base competition.
I loved playing LT competition.
I loved playing the single player.

Id say the marketing was good, shit they even had a music video about T:V. Although I know nothing about marketing thats just my opinion.

QUESTION: Do you think that if VUG supported IGA to make at least 3-4 patches that fixed bugs and gameplay problems, do you think T:V would have been more of a success?


Well, it's fun to play in fantasy land, but honestly I don't think it would have mattered. If you make a graph of the sales history of games, almost every one has a very similar shape. The majority of your sales are in the first four or five weeks and then it levels out and slopes down. Games have higher or lower peaks, but the overall shape of the chart is remarkably similar for most.

So what that says is that you can't overcome a bad launch. It doesn't matter how great the game turns out after patches, people have moved on and won't look back. It's really an awareness issue - how do you communicate that the game is better? How do you get over the hurdle of someone's initial impression that the game wasn't their cup of tea? These are very difficult questions.

Just take a look at Anarchy Online, which had a dismal launch, but from all accounts is actually quite fun and playable now. Doesn't matter, I'm pretty sure they're not acquiring new subscribers faster than they're losing them.

Again, though, this is purely fantasy. There was never going to be a big patch, much less two or more. The patch that you guys envision in your head was never going to get made - the reality of the patch we talked about and then killed was that it fixed a few very minor issues and could have introduced new ones of its own.

If the game was in such a sorry state why didn't someone speak up and say: "If we release it like this it'll be a flop, we'll lose a ton of money, and the series will die. If we delay 6 months, polish, and release it'll be a major seller and ultimately X times more profitable." ?

I understand you were dealing with corporate pressures to release a game they didn't care about but even a numbskull can respond to profitability estimates. I would be professionally embarrassed to have any responsibility for the game in its launch state.

Can someone talk about the launch a little more. It seemed like there was some good early publicity, then horrible box art, then non-existant launch publicity.

2 days after launch I found TV on the bottom shelf in the back of the store with one clerk asking the other one if it was there.

wtf happened?

No. I don't remember this. Can you fill me in oh historian of the interweb?

Did you not ban Fancy Cat for weeks becuase he called Thrax a faggot?

Did you not make a new rule that anyone who insulted any of the Devs in GD got an automatic ban?

Just take a look at Anarchy Online, which had a dismal launch, but from all accounts is actually quite fun and playable now. Doesn't matter, I'm pretty sure they're not acquiring new subscribers faster than they're losing them.


Are you kidding? The launch was worse than Asheron's Call 2, and ended up being a better game because they got all their shit straightened out. They have had numerous expansion packs, and by all accounts a healthy lifespan for an MMO. They kept on improving, and people kept on buying. Stillborn games dont launch book series.

If the game was in such a sorry state why didn't someone speak up and say: "If we release it like this it'll be a flop, we'll lose a ton of money, and the series will die. If we delay 6 months, polish, and release it'll be a major seller and ultimately X times more profitable." ?



Well, there's the rub. It didn't suck. The game worked. Review scores were good. It was on time and on budget. Yeah, it wasn't the right game, but you can't walk into an execs office and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development."

And besides that, again, you're missing the whole context of what was going on at VUG at the time. Even if you did walk into a room full of suits and say that, they would have just asked "does it suck? No, ok, well, get it on shelves before WoW and HL2 ship."

By October 2004, there was nobody at VUG with any power who cared one iota about Tribes or if the series was about to die. All it takes is a look at a sales chart to figure that one out. Even if the game was AWESOME, had no bugs, and was god's gift to both Tribes 1 and Tribes 2 players, it's still Tribes, and still had a ceiling of how many copies would ever be sold. As hard as we tried, the series had no break-out potential like a Half-Life.

Of course this is all stuff you understand in hind-sight. When the game was green-lit, Medal of Honor:Allied Assault had just come out on PC and we saw how huge that was, and we all really thought we could do that with Tribes.

Again, the enormously complicated nature of getting a game designed, created, and sold is not common sense to folks who haven't been through it. Working at a game publisher is a lot like working at any other big company - you've got office politics, bad bosses, rediculous deadlines and workloads, and a lot of other stuff that makes it hard to just sit down and do the perfect thing all day.

Those of you who have this sort of job probably understand what I'm talking about. Those of you still in high school or college probably don't.

10 pages of this is cathartic.
20 pages makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. I can't believe how this exploded.

I don't think Dave G. will show up. But if he does, I wish him well.

Thrax, wasn't there a company that we got a proposal from, that we didn't like? And then the company withdrew after we followed up with them. Seventh something? Fal?Who was the initial developer you wanted to go with, anyhow? I seem to remember one of you mentioning that IG was the 2nd choice, there was someone else you had tried to court first.

PS If Unreal was the 3rd engine choice, what was the 2nd?

well i'm sure torque was an option, since they contacted Garage Games to possibly make Tribes:Vengeance, which GG turned down.

i'm 'in the industry' now and i hope our publishing deal (well actually we don't have one yet..still waiting) doesn't turn sour heh

Well, there's the rub. It didn't suck. The game worked. Review scores were good. It was on time and on budget. Yeah, it wasn't the right game, but you can't walk into an execs office and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development."

And besides that, again, you're missing the whole context of what was going on at VUG at the time. Even if you did walk into a room full of suits and say that, they would have just asked "does it suck? No, ok, well, get it on shelves before WoW and HL2 ship."

By October 2004, there was nobody at VUG with any power who cared one iota about Tribes or if the series was about to die. All it takes is a look at a sales chart to figure that one out. Even if the game was AWESOME, had no bugs, and was god's gift to both Tribes 1 and Tribes 2 players, it's still Tribes, and still had a ceiling of how many copies would ever be sold. As hard as we tried, the series had no break-out potential like a Half-Life.

I am not missing the context. It sounds like no one ever tried to do what I suggested. If you walk into the exec room and say "The game is at 75% completion and getting 85s from review sites. We expect it to sell 500,000 copies vs tough gaming competition. If we put in another million and 6 months, we can get it to 95% completion, reviews will be better, and we'll expect to sell many more copies."

What I'm arguing is that YOU, the devs, went into the creation of the game assuming it would be a niche market and putting in niche market resources and time. Single player felt newbified and wasn't very compelling since the AI never flew around and displayed jack shit for strategic or tactical thinking. Multiplayer was just too unbalanced and buggy and both of these could have been fixed had the design team's vision been focused differently. Tribes is the sort of game not many people played but everyone knew about and it could have been a blockbuster, even with HL2 and BF1942 around, with a proper advertising campaign and the resolve to actually complete and polish it. Very few games have an engrossing contextual world; Tribes does and yet it was never delved into...imagine how much better T:V would have been if it were more like Mechwarrior 3 in which gameplay almost took a second seat to the presentation of a robust and interesting storyline/world. Such an experience is what makes the Half-Life series so good [and so profitable] and Tribes could have had that as well.

"The game wouldn't have done well no matter what we did" is the definition of a cop-out.

Those of you who have this sort of job probably understand what I'm talking about. Those of you still in high school or college probably don't.

Fuck you. I've managed to put together a 2 year research project that will actually be published without errors. People will build off of my work, people will look at T:V as an example of how not to produce and launch a game.

This thread is really a great thread. I can't begin to describe how this thread makes me feel.

It didn't suck. The game worked. Review scores were good. It was on time and on budget. Yeah, it wasn't the right game, but you can't walk into an execs office and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development."


yeah it would prolly take nuts to say something like that to your boss. I'm actualy glad to not be a part of corporate ass-kissing office politics.

No fps is going to break out and get half life numbers. You could have easily done everything that BF has done(within the context of the Tribes universe) and had a franchise that was alive instead of dead. I really don't blame any marketing people unless you somehow influenced how T:V was designed. You can't convince any more people to try your game when the free public demo of your game promoted by the two most major gaming sites on the planet manages only to attract 1116 people at it's peak.

Well, there's the rub. It didn't suck. The game worked. Review scores were good. It was on time and on budget. Yeah, it wasn't the right game, but you can't walk into an execs office and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development."...

However, you can walk in and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development...because if we don't, I'm willing to bet Thrax's sweater the game doesn't top 50k units."
If you three guys(maybe more in your camp, I dunno) had all said that, you can tell me they still would have gone the same route?

And would a patch that would have addressed the two largest complaints, all niggling aside, the netcode and the tourny play, really have cost MILLIONS?

Are you certain that in a former life you weren't a member of congress?

Fuck you. I've managed to put together a 2 year research project that will actually be published without errors. People will build off of my work, people will look at T:V as an example of how not to produce and launch a game.

....and yet you still don't have a clue what that sort of environment is like.

....and yet you still don't have a clue what that sort of environment is like.


I'd wager that getting grant money is as competitive than getting money from a publisher. Ever worked in academia? There's just as much politics as in the business world and a lot of people willing to get worked up over protecting the ideas they're staking their careers on. Even gettnig a few thousand dollars for a potentially groundbreaking idea is hard as hell...people fund stupid shit like eating disorder research before they'll fund brain imaging studies.

edit - more to as, since it's probably equivalent

However, you can walk in and say, "you know that game that's going to get 85% review scores, well, it turns out that it's really not what anyone wants, so we need to put millions more dollars into the development...because if we don't, I'm willing to bet Thrax's sweater the game doesn't top 50k units."

If you three guys(maybe more in your camp, I dunno) had all said that, you can tell me they still would have gone the same route?


Guaranteed they would have gone the same route. 100%. Don't you read Dilbert?

T2 was the best game of the franchise. It had a nice amount of dev and modded gametypes to keep it fresh and fun. Only thing is, it had two death-dealing mistakes:
1. The buggy launch
2. Not incorporating T1 style physics from the start.

T:V never should have been made, although I appreciated the effort. From the start, however, I knew it would fail.

And who are the retards saying the Source engine would have been good for Tribes?

I'd wager that getting grant money is as competitive than getting money from a publisher. Ever worked in academia? There's just as much politics as in the business world and a lot of people willing to get worked up over protecting the ideas they're staking their careers on. Even gettnig a few thousand dollars for a potentially groundbreaking idea is hard as hell...people fund stupid shit like eating disorder research before they'll fund brain imaging studies.

edit - more to as, since it's probably equivalent
:lol: yeah okay that does sound about right

"who cares about brains?? FOOD!!!!"

I just wanted to post in this epic thread.