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Derek Smart is a software designer and internet personality living in Florida. He best known as the eccentric creator of the Battlecruiser video game series.
Smart is more known for his online presence than he is for the games that he makes. This is due to his participation in some of the larger flame wars in the gaming culture, and due to his aggresive and proud attitude.
Smart is devoted to and protective of his work, and is likely to find and participate in discussions of his games on the internet. Heated discussions may lead to Smart's supporters and detractors who are unrelated to the forum to sign themselves in just to appear and flame each other and ruin the forum thread.
Among the more bizarre conflagrations, Smart's alleged doctoral-degree (all public messages by him are signed as "Derek Smart, PhD") was shown to be fraudulent. Smart has consistently failed to provide any proof to substantiate his claims.
His critics claim that his games are characterised as over-hyped, buggy, and having frustratingly complicated interfaces which require very large basic operating manuals. His supporters respond with the fact that he has managed to create and publish four games, which is four more games than most aspiring game developers ever get to create.
During production of Smart's first game, BC3K, he made incredible claims as to its features. The game was released by publisher Take Two before it was finished. It contained many bugs that made it very difficult to play. It also had what many believed to be an exceedingly complex interface and gameplay. Because of these factors, the game was publically lambasted. Smart voiced his opinions on the (supposed) premature release numerously and strongly. Eventually, a patch (v2.0) was released to fix most of the major bugs. This is a characteristic of almost all of his games, enormous amount of hype prior to release, and when the product is released and not found to contain the aformentioned features, naturally the game is lambasted in gaming reviews.
Smart's last game was Universal Combat, which received average to mediocre reviews in online game magazine reviews.
Games
- Universal Combat (2004)
- Battlecruiser Millennium: Gold Edition (2003)
- Battlecruiser Millennium (2001)
- Battlecruiser 3000AD (v2.0) (1998)
- Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996)