Hi-Rez Studios, independent developer of AAA free-to-play online games, today announced the Summer of Tribes tournament series. Between May and August 2012, Tribes: Ascend tournaments will award over $30,000 in cash and prizing, with each event being broadcast live over the internet with supporting game commentary.

Tribes: Ascend, billed as the World’s Fastest Shooter, will be featured by leagues and tournament providers including North American Star League (NASL), Electronic Sports League (ESL), Cyber Sports Network (CSN), European Game Series (EGS), Curse Networks and FPS General.

The finals for the first event are this Saturday, May 12th with CSN and over $2,500 in prizing.

The top prize for the summer will be $10,000 prize pool for NASL Season 3. The NASL Tribes: Ascend semi-finals will be broadcast from E3 and the grand-finals will be a live LAN event in Toronto, Canada.

Todd Harris, Hi-Rez Studios COO said:

“Given that we just released Tribes: Ascend mid April, we’re pleased with how quickly the e-Sports community is growing. Our team believes that Tribes can be a premier spectator event and we’re thrilled to have partners who share this vision and support the community with great broadcast content as well as prizing.”

Hi-Rez announced intent to stream selected tournament games within the Tribes: Ascend game client itself. The next digital update to Tribes: Ascend will integrate live viewing of featured games powered by TwitchTV.

Todd Harris added:

“The community is already using TwitchTV to stream Tribes: Ascend game activity. With the next update we’ll feature certain streams as viewable within the game itself so those become broadcast events.”

“We enjoy working with developers like Hi-Rez Studios who harness live video to support their game community,” says Kevin Lin, TwitchTV Chief Operating Officer. “At Twitch we’ve seen a phenomenal rise in eSports, and it is exciting to see the growing popularity of a fast-action FPS like Tribes: Ascend.”