starsiege-tribes posts

This weekend's out of the blue announcement of a new game in the Tribes series of sci-fi shooters by developer Hi-Rez Studios likely has the attention of some old school gamers who remember where they were when the original game in the franchise was first released. However it's also likely that many people reading this web site have never played, or even worse, never heard of the Tribes series.

So we decided to whip a quick history of the Tribes franchise for those of you who have yet to play any of the games in the series. The franchise was a massive influence of the first person shooter genre, particularly in its multiplayer features. In many ways the first game in the series was years ahead of its time but its successors never achieved the audience that the first game did.

Some of you may remember that over a year ago GarageGames and its InstantAction.com business announced that they had purchased the Tribes IP rights. They also announced plans to offer the original Starsiege: Tribes multiplayer shooter as a free game via the InstantAction.com browser site. They even showed a beta of the browser version running at PAX last September.

Since then, however, there's been little news on the progress of bringing the InstantAction.com version of Tribes to the public. In a recent video blog on the InstantAction.com blog site, reps from the company state," . . . we absolutely want to do these things but we have to take care of ourselves (InstantAction) first)." InstantAction.com is still in transition as of the time of this post; the main site is still down as they move to a streaming game business model. However the the video blog gave no clear idea of when InstantAction.com will be back in operation, nor when the promised Tribes release will take place. You can check out the video blog after the jump.

While the original Starsiege: Tribes first person shooter is available as a free downloadable title, wouldn't it be cool to just play the game on a browser. GarageGames and InstantAction plan to do just that very soon with their web browser based version of Tribes. We got a chance to play a beta of the Tribes browser game at PAX 2009 this weekend.

Basically if you played Tribes when it first came out almost 11 years ago you will be familiar with the browser based version. It's basically the same game with a few extra bug fixes, according to InstantAction reps. The game is also purely multiplayer (no bots here) so you and your friends will have to join servers and play in the game's massive levels, defend bases, build and repair turrets and items and more. In short it's going to be pure nostalgia fun.

But will there be more to come? While InstantAction already has a kind of spiritual successor to Tribes running on their servers (Fallen Empire: Legions) they did say that if the browser version of Tribes turns out to be a hit they could add new content to the game (the company now owns the rights to the Tribes franchise). There's no release date set for the InstantAction version of Tribes but based on our playtime it shouldn't be too much of a wait.

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Online multiplayer games owe a debt to a brave few that took the classic, minimalized gameplay and elevated it beyond tiny arenas and small teams. Games like the Battlefield series or Freelancer would not exist without some of these incredible, genre-busting, landscape-changing experiences. Starsiege: Tribes is one of these games, and thanks to the machinations of those behind the intellectual property, it is available for free to anybody wanting to give it a try. And try it you should, because its massive multiplayer mayhem philosophy exudes influence on designers even in the modern day.

On Tuesday we reported that GarageGames was going to port the original Starsiege: Tribes game to work with their InstantAction.com browser based game web site. Today the site's official blog page has some more info on this new development.

The big news: GarageGames does indeed now own the Tribes IP. It bought the rights from Activision Blizzard late in 2008. Previously all Tribes games were published by Vivendi Games but, as with many game franchises absorbed in their merger with Activision last year the management team decided not to move forward with any more Tribes titles.

The original Kotaku story, however, was wrong in saying the game will have upgraded graphics. However it does support modern file formats. It will also be distributed as a stand alone game but can also be played via the InstantAction.com browser site. More info on the port is expected to be announced next week.

Fans of the original massive outdoor multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes just got some good news today. A port of the 1998 released game from the now defunct Dynamix is coming to the InstantAction.com browser game web site later this year.

InstantAction.com was created by indie game developer GarageGames which was founded by a number of ex-Dynamix folks. When InstantAction.com was launched in 2008 they included a Tribes-like game called Fallen Empire: Legions. However it appears that they now have the rights to the genuine article. According to Kotaku a playable version of the InstantAction.com port of Tribes will be shown next week at GDC. It will reportedly have improved graphics and better mod support