Scott Jennings :
It’s actually a play on the advertising tag line for Smart’s magnum opus: “Battlecruiser 3000: The Last Game You’ll Ever Desire”.

And yet they both work so well when you shift the emphasis to the word “last”!

Bob :
“Derek Smart: the last community manager you’ll ever desire.”
Thanks for that benchmark. Trying to think what being a community manager under Derek would be like is enough to keep me happy at any future job I may hold.

Read that tag line again, but put the emphasis on the word “last”; I think that’s what Lum was thinking when he wrote it.

silvertemplar :
Well without being funny, if we ignore Derek Smart’s history here and just read his comments for what he is actually saying…
..doesn’t anyway else feel like going “AMEN” ? Come on, everything he said about MMOs failing for being released unfinished, to WoW-cloning without the budget and removing subscriptions is exactly what we REALLY WANT TO HEAR from a development house.
I mean, what’s the alternative? PR bull-crap veiled in some “we are adding more features in 3 months” nonsense?

Exactly. Once you get past the “who” and look at the “what” it’s just a nugget of what ought to be common sense.

Dr. Smart (*cough*) has some experience that will be very useful to Alganon: He survived one of the worst releases in video game history. And then subsequently managed to resell the same re-hacked code over and over again. On the flip side, his games are extremely niche. That may reflect where Alganon actually is, but is completely at odds with its design. His statements are also little changed from 15 years ago, which is probably why you and I are cynical, and people like Tobold find him refreshing:

The v1.01D7C [I'm not making this up] patch will be out by the end of the month, complete with all game systems operational… +/- 2 years.

But in a world of faceless corporate clone development, at least Derek can be guaranteed to liven things up…

Oh, and “Battlecruiser Online” has already got 10 years of development work behind it. Just you wait and see…

geldonyetich :
I could see that being either real bad or real good depending on if the management holds you responsible for Derek’s lip or grants you compete permission to be just as scathing with the average forum twit.

Trust me, having a senior manager who doesn’t know when to shut up is never a good thing regardless of how much latitude you’re given.

Thanks for that benchmark. Trying to think what being a community manager under Derek would be like is enough to keep me happy at any future job I may hold.

I could see that being either real bad or real good depending on if the management holds you responsible for Derek’s lip or grants you compete permission to be just as scathing with the average forum twit.

Thanks for that benchmark. Trying to think what being a community manager under Derek would be like is enough to keep me happy at any future job I may hold.