Derek Smart
Derek Smart is a
software designer and
Internet personality living in
Florida. He is the creator of the
Battlecruiser 3000AD video game series, now
Universal Combat.
Smart has participated in a number of controversial public discussions on
Usenet and the web.
Smart's first game,
Battlecruiser 3000AD was released unfinished by
Take Two Interactive in 1996, and contained many bugs that made it unplayable. [
1] [
2] [
3]
In early 1997, Smart sued Take Two for reasons related to their release of the game in its unfinished form. The publisher negotiated with Smart and the lawsuit did not reach a courtroom. [
4] In late 1998, in a
statement lauding Smart's work and efforts, Take Two president Ryan Brant announced that the matter had been resolved. Take Two later went public and in its
filings listed Smart's first game as accounting for 14.2% of its yearly earnings.
A constant stream of patches and upgrades were later released for the product over the next few months and, eventually, a final patch was released to fix some of the major bugs. Smart then later
released the game for free on the Internet and hosted on the
popular download sites.
Over the next few years, Smart continued to work on improving his game as he originally envisioned. In
1998 the popularity of the freeware downloads of the original BC3K game later convinced Interplay to
publish an improved and finished version in
1998 as
Battlecruiser 3000 AD 2.0. In
2001 Smart released this game for free on the Internet, where to this day continues to post large downloads at some of the popular download
sites. For such an old product, to this day it remains in a
top downloads list for the space-sim genre.
Smart continued to work on improving his franchise and advancing the technologies in his game. The sales of the Interplay release of the game gained him an
exclusive deal with
Electronics Boutique for his next game,
Battlecruiser Millennium which his company 3000AD, Inc self-published and released in
2001.
In
2003 Smart signed a two product
deal with
Dreamcatcher Games for
Battlecruiser Millennium Gold and Battlecruiser Generations. The latter being a brand new addition to the series, with
newer technologies than its predecessors.
A few months later, the publisher had discussions with Smart that resulted in a decision to change the premise to be more action-based than the
Battlecruiser series had been known for. The
name was changed to
Universal Combat.
The game was not ready in time for the
2003 holidays and was shipped in early
2004 at half of the originally announced price. In an attempt to prevent history from repeating itself, Smart took legal action against the publisher to stop shipment of the game which was still in
final Beta stages and which he felt required more testing. He failed to obtain a temporary restraining order which would have prevented the publisher from releasing the game.
The game received average to mediocre reviews in several game magazine reviews. [
5]
Despite an earlier
2005 announcement by
Dreamcatcher Games to publish Smart's next sequel, Smart later
terminated his publishing deal with the publisher and severed all ties with
Dreamcatcher Games.
Smart's
2005 game,
Universal Combat A World Apart is a full sequel to the original
Universal Combat with a
variety of revisions and enhancements especially to the graphics engine. Despite the enhancements, it received average to mediocre reviews. [
6] [
7]
Smart also released
Universal Combat Gold in 2005. This is an updated version of the original
Universal Combat with new scenarios and graphics enhancements.
Also new to
2005 is the fact that both of the 2005 games can currently only be purchased via online resellers. Smart also has obtained the license to Freespace and was keen on developing the Freespace franchise which lead to considerable protests from the fanbase with Smart expressing his views too[
8].
*
3000AD Inc. website*
Derek Smart's website*
A compilation of Derek Smart interviewsControversy and Criticism
*
Bill Huffman's Derek Smart pages at werewolves.org (likely to be critical of Derek Smart)
*
Battlecruiser 3000 AD entry in Gamespy's "The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming.
