- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
"The fact of the matter is, most of you are just jealous. Pure and simple. In the past when I would sink down to your levels, engage you in the pits, return insult for insult etc, some of you got this [false] impression that we were of the same calibre; let alone the same caste. I make no excuses for who I am or what I am. What I DO know - and that which is proven and consistent - is that I have progressed over the years, improved on that which I created etc. While, well, all of you are just the same crochety, stagnant, inconsequential people you always were." --Derek Smart
With Phil Fish and Brianna Wu getting their own threads, it seems almost remiss that there's been no discussion of the developer lolcow that started it all. Long before John Romero made us his bitch, Phil Fish told us to "suck his dick, choke on it," before Brianna Wu implied she was the most oppressed woman in games development, and befire Duke Nukem Forever became the largest running gag in the history of Video Games, there was Derek Smart.
For the uninitiated, Derek Smart's an independent developer behind Battlecruiser 3000AD, a terribly ambitious game that seemed too good to be true.... And ultimately, was. The idea was for it to be the comprehensive space sim: You could fly a flagship around the galaxy, get into space battles, land and deploy scouting and away teams, or deploy military forces in a blend of strategy game and space sim. After failing to get funding for it repeatedly, he eventually succeeded at getting a publisher interested; however, the game itself seemed cursed and wound up getting shuffled from company to company, passed around like a quarterly report nobody wanted to read during an inter-office bickering session, with each company that acquired the property either going bankrupt or being subject to a buy out or whatever.
It eventually wound up in the hands of Take Two Interactive, who demanded regular progress that Smart couldn't keep up with. This was back when Take Two was way smaller than it is now - and the game's mere development over the course of one year accounted for over 14% of the company's expenses, over half a million of which was given in advance. This was unheard of at the time, and in the end, Take Two was left with the odious decision of either launching with what they had after hammering it together, or hemorrhage more money that they really couldn't afford. In the end, Take Two decided to cut their losses and kick Battlecruiser 3000AD out the airlock.
Unpolished as it was, the game was shredded by critics, who were a bit understandably frustrated that the game was nothing like the hype. Smart was engraged, screaming all manner of profanities at Take Two and, if rumors are to be believed, destroying a vending machine in their office. This would be a sign of things to come. And though Smart kept at it, periodically working to release his "finalized" version of his game, updating in installments and periodically releasing a "holy shit you guys this version is best evar" version to market on his own dime. Persistent guy, but that's not exactly why he became the sort of proto-lolcow that was milked endlessly by at least 15 different communities. Smart had a bit of an ego, it seems. More so, really, than even his contemporaries, and holds a record that, even over a decade hence, has yet to really be trumped.
Smart was - and still is - notorious for Googling his name and his game, finding individual users that ever specified that his game(s) were anything less than absolute fucking mastery, and then, very elegantly, flaming the fucking shit out of the person who offended his sensibilities. And whilst Usenet is by far the location that saw him the most, Smart could be found everywhere, and whenever his game was being mocked in an organized fashion, there he would be, screaming hate-filled epithets and insulting anyone who dared disparage him.
Bro Team Pill's brigade invades Alganon.
You know how Chris spergs out about Sonic's arms being blue in Sonic Boom? Well, imagine that kind of sperg rage, but leveled at pretty much anyone who criticized his vidya gaem and you pretty much get the idea. He continues to this very day, mostly due to his involvement with the infamously shit RPG Alganon, which came under fire for essentially ripping off World of Warcraft. He also posts pretty extensively on Gamasutra; he hasn't really improved any.
Smart is one of those lolcows that you can't help but smile at. Like Chris, he's just out there, doing his thing, and he won't ever shut the fuck up. I'm an old enough Oldfag to remember when he earned his alleged celebrity status on Usenet, and I kind of feel that such a shitstorm-raiser still being around and kicking nowadays is sort of a victory for the rest of the internet, for the younger generation of internet chronicleers should not be denied such amusement.
With Phil Fish and Brianna Wu getting their own threads, it seems almost remiss that there's been no discussion of the developer lolcow that started it all. Long before John Romero made us his bitch, Phil Fish told us to "suck his dick, choke on it," before Brianna Wu implied she was the most oppressed woman in games development, and befire Duke Nukem Forever became the largest running gag in the history of Video Games, there was Derek Smart.
For the uninitiated, Derek Smart's an independent developer behind Battlecruiser 3000AD, a terribly ambitious game that seemed too good to be true.... And ultimately, was. The idea was for it to be the comprehensive space sim: You could fly a flagship around the galaxy, get into space battles, land and deploy scouting and away teams, or deploy military forces in a blend of strategy game and space sim. After failing to get funding for it repeatedly, he eventually succeeded at getting a publisher interested; however, the game itself seemed cursed and wound up getting shuffled from company to company, passed around like a quarterly report nobody wanted to read during an inter-office bickering session, with each company that acquired the property either going bankrupt or being subject to a buy out or whatever.
It eventually wound up in the hands of Take Two Interactive, who demanded regular progress that Smart couldn't keep up with. This was back when Take Two was way smaller than it is now - and the game's mere development over the course of one year accounted for over 14% of the company's expenses, over half a million of which was given in advance. This was unheard of at the time, and in the end, Take Two was left with the odious decision of either launching with what they had after hammering it together, or hemorrhage more money that they really couldn't afford. In the end, Take Two decided to cut their losses and kick Battlecruiser 3000AD out the airlock.
Unpolished as it was, the game was shredded by critics, who were a bit understandably frustrated that the game was nothing like the hype. Smart was engraged, screaming all manner of profanities at Take Two and, if rumors are to be believed, destroying a vending machine in their office. This would be a sign of things to come. And though Smart kept at it, periodically working to release his "finalized" version of his game, updating in installments and periodically releasing a "holy shit you guys this version is best evar" version to market on his own dime. Persistent guy, but that's not exactly why he became the sort of proto-lolcow that was milked endlessly by at least 15 different communities. Smart had a bit of an ego, it seems. More so, really, than even his contemporaries, and holds a record that, even over a decade hence, has yet to really be trumped.
Smart was - and still is - notorious for Googling his name and his game, finding individual users that ever specified that his game(s) were anything less than absolute fucking mastery, and then, very elegantly, flaming the fucking shit out of the person who offended his sensibilities. And whilst Usenet is by far the location that saw him the most, Smart could be found everywhere, and whenever his game was being mocked in an organized fashion, there he would be, screaming hate-filled epithets and insulting anyone who dared disparage him.
You know how Chris spergs out about Sonic's arms being blue in Sonic Boom? Well, imagine that kind of sperg rage, but leveled at pretty much anyone who criticized his vidya gaem and you pretty much get the idea. He continues to this very day, mostly due to his involvement with the infamously shit RPG Alganon, which came under fire for essentially ripping off World of Warcraft. He also posts pretty extensively on Gamasutra; he hasn't really improved any.
Smart is one of those lolcows that you can't help but smile at. Like Chris, he's just out there, doing his thing, and he won't ever shut the fuck up. I'm an old enough Oldfag to remember when he earned his alleged celebrity status on Usenet, and I kind of feel that such a shitstorm-raiser still being around and kicking nowadays is sort of a victory for the rest of the internet, for the younger generation of internet chronicleers should not be denied such amusement.
