Hey! Dynamix sent along another one of those TRIBES Extreme update dealies, this time giving a bunch of designer Scott Rudi's background in games gone by and more (including the fact that his dad is in fact ex major-league baseball player Joe Rudi!). Here's a quote:

Scott looks forward to expanding the TRIBES Universe with TRIBES Extreme. "We've had a lot of interest from the community in broadening the focus of the game setting, maybe eventually creating new games in the Universe, new types of gameplay. TRIBES Extreme is just the first step in that direction."

By new types of gameplay, Scott means cooperative campaigns. "We have cooperative missions in TRIBES Extreme where a squad of players can go in and play against the computer. Players can even link missions to form their own cooperative campaigns. But what I'd really like to do is set up a cooperative campaign with an epic plot, optimized for a group to play and experience the story together." Such a goal poses a range of challenges, but Scott feels sure the time is right.

"Cooperative games really are distinct from single-player games." The balancing is different, he says, because you have multiple players participating instead of one, so the mission design necessarily becomes far more non-linear, more of an environment setup than a scripted plotline. "TRIBES as it stands poses some additional design difficulties, though, because it originated as a purely online game. We've had to construct a single-player version without disturbing that multiplayer cornerstone."