With the recent news that VUG has discontinued work on the Vengeance patch and will not release it, the TRIBES community is left holding the bag. We have another lackluster Tribes game that hints at the promise of TRIBES, yet fails to deliver either audience or satisfaction.
Before we get to what to do next, let’s lay out some baseline facts. VUG owns the TRIBES IP outright. It will have no plans for current support, let alone further TRIBES products. The corporate plan will be to price protect the product all the way down to the bargain bin, make whatever few dollars they can off direct downloads. The remaining income from the TRIBES brand until the end of the life cycle plus any future licensing potential will be enough for them to protect their interest in it.
TribalWar will have nothing further to do with TRIBES except as a fan site helping them squeeze the last few nickels out of the franchise. No petitions, no stunts, and no pleas to gaming press are going to change any of these facts.
So how do we move on?
Well, the obvious reaction, the primal TW response is revenge. We do have the power to utterly nullify the TRIBES brand value, even turn it into a liability for VUG. We can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and without breaking any laws. We can make sure no game with that name sells at retail for the next 5 years or so, probably much longer. We can cause bigwigs heartache and middle managers to squirm.
But first we must consider the consequences. The actions such as the ones I would suggest will have one of two results. Either VUG will shut the game down completely, happy to wash their hands of this disaster completely with the cash from WoW and HL2. Else, VUG will bother to ask what the hell we want before shutting the game down completely, happy to wash their hands of this disaster completely with the cash from WoW and HL2. And I mean right down to the master servers.
Are we ready for that? I don’t think so. But I'd hear what you think.
Do you consider TRIBES so dead that you would want to ruin it to get a last shot at VUG??? And if by some chance VUG did give us their attention instead, what is it we want???
Before we get to what to do next, let’s lay out some baseline facts. VUG owns the TRIBES IP outright. It will have no plans for current support, let alone further TRIBES products. The corporate plan will be to price protect the product all the way down to the bargain bin, make whatever few dollars they can off direct downloads. The remaining income from the TRIBES brand until the end of the life cycle plus any future licensing potential will be enough for them to protect their interest in it.
TribalWar will have nothing further to do with TRIBES except as a fan site helping them squeeze the last few nickels out of the franchise. No petitions, no stunts, and no pleas to gaming press are going to change any of these facts.
So how do we move on?
Well, the obvious reaction, the primal TW response is revenge. We do have the power to utterly nullify the TRIBES brand value, even turn it into a liability for VUG. We can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and without breaking any laws. We can make sure no game with that name sells at retail for the next 5 years or so, probably much longer. We can cause bigwigs heartache and middle managers to squirm.
But first we must consider the consequences. The actions such as the ones I would suggest will have one of two results. Either VUG will shut the game down completely, happy to wash their hands of this disaster completely with the cash from WoW and HL2. Else, VUG will bother to ask what the hell we want before shutting the game down completely, happy to wash their hands of this disaster completely with the cash from WoW and HL2. And I mean right down to the master servers.
Are we ready for that? I don’t think so. But I'd hear what you think.
Do you consider TRIBES so dead that you would want to ruin it to get a last shot at VUG??? And if by some chance VUG did give us their attention instead, what is it we want???