The Mission of "FPSZ"

Forward
This is yet another document I found in my archives collecting dust which seems relevant this week, after recently been addressed by another Tribes indie dev who is thinking up something big for us Tribes gamers. It goes into detail of why we picked the name "FPSZ" to categorize our old disbanded game, Ascension. Kinda funny how this term stuck- used when referencing Legions, and used in referencing Ascend. It makes me proud every time I hear the term used, that it came from us at RenWerX. So without further adieu...

Mission Goal
FPSZ wasn't a term we tried to used to "market" Ascension as Amadeus would say- though it did help in that regard when you consider we were trying to rebrand ourselves afer leaving Tribes Vengeance:Renegades behind. We made the switch to creating a full-fledged game. When I coined the term FPSZ it meant to be something tangible for all people who love Tribes as its core could rally behind. The Tribes gameplay was the result of exploiting a bug in the early stages of a game, a mistake many Tribes players would call the most beloved game bug to ever exist in gaming history. The game community that grew up around the game were just as quirky in their nature as the game itself, just like the clumsy beginning of a bug known to us as skiing.

The game suffered from many unfortunate circumstances- it came out near the dawn of internet gaming, a huge digital frontier free from a lot of restrictions there are in games these days. There wasn't as many people playing games then as there are now. During this time games were more easily shared by friends illegally too, so Tribes developed an underground following. And as the community grew the player community became more splintered because different players preferred different "flavors" of Tribes. Most players of Tribes seem to have a very passionate bias for how they played Tribes. It also didn't help that the game was hard to really explain to other people without showing them- the notion of skiing and jetting, and all of the other quirky things about the game. Because of all of these factors, the outward appearance of Tribes was murky at best.

Getting to the point- during of our rebranding meetings. I considered the nature of the community, considered everything I mentioned above, in my stream of thought. And it occured to me- the gameplay ought to be symbolized or represented by something. Something tribals could rally behind. Something short and to the point- and, eureka, FPSZ. The term meant "FPS plus emphasis in the Z axis" (which was the up axis in the cartisean coordinate system, in the engine we were using, and in most engines now a days). FPSZ wasn't meant to be "edgey" or "elite"- as it may have seemed- though many players of other shooters did claim to "graduate" to Tribes, so the "Z" could stand for that, sure. But for us, FPSZ meant a certain, specific thing. Shooters of the FPSZ genre were to have skiing and jetting as main mobility in the game. That's something most if not ALL Tribes players (who are normally unagreeable) can agree is at the core of Tribes. FPSZ was meant to be the umbrella term for all of these styles of play, and obviously be a sub-genre of FPS games.

I slowly became addicted to Tribes when I first started playing it. So it really struck a nerve when people argued "Tribes is dead"- because its game play is so unique, I thought how could people even say that? These days all the games out there seem the same, and Tribes is something different, but totally under-appreciated by the masses. I wanted to make a Tribes game- I made it one of my life's goals, and it's kept me going for quite some time. From a game development perspective, it seemed like a gold-mine: something investors would still be able to get behind if it was explained in the right way and finally showcased to the masses in an appealing light with a name they'd remember. Something tangible.

So that's why FPSZ exists- it was my answer to the problem. FPSZ meant giving the Tribes community something to stand behind. If the community embraced it. If they did, we wouldn't have to call our game a 'Tribes successor' or 'Tribes Remake' and no longer would the game style be shrouded in obscurity. And starting from there, we'd build up.

In ways you can say my "FPSZ" answer is similiar to the answer given to...

"Hey! This bug is really neat to use, but I don't know how to explain it to my friend, what I should call it?"

"...skiing"

I don't know if this will be taken seriously or not- but I want to appeal to everyone who loved the idea of skiing and jetting- and who will be sad if it ever really dies- I want to appeal to you to band together under "FPSZ"- and if a game ever tries to capture the nature of Tribes, call it a "FPSZ". It's a practical way to promote and increase awareness of the gameplay.

That was the mission goal of FPSZ.