From: Paolo Subject: Why bother about Derek Smart? Date: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 5:33 AM Hello All, I have followed this ng for a while since I have a few more free time now then usual. I have been amazed by the amount of hate mails and after I while I found the entire thing incredibly interesting to follow. I also spent time looking at the various web sites (the bc3k one and the detractors ones as well...). It is absolutely incredible! It reminds me the period of the Crusades or some other 'Holy War' of the past. At the end, well, I have to say that I do not really understand Derek Smart and up to a certain extent, the people that fight against him (well, I DO understand they do it for the sheer pleasure of flaming ;-), but honestly, why worry about this guy? 1) He claims to have a Ph.D.: I guess nobody (except perhaps his mama) could be affected by the fact he has a real Ph.D. or not. If he has not a Ph.D. and he claims to have one, well it is a problem for Mr. Smart psychologic. If he has one, fine, so what? Perhaps Ph.D. have better brains or bigger penises (just to cover different options) then average? It is incredibly ridicolous... 2) He claims to be a Mensa Member: See above. 3) He describes himself as a Game Tychoon. Well, at least we are getting something tangible here. His results (or lack of) could be evaluated very well. So Mr. Smart is a good business-man or not? It is very simple. If he has produced good games then he's good otherwise he is not. It is simple as that. Now, he can shout, yell and scream about the fact "his" games are wonderful, but that does not mean anything. If he has worked for years to produce a game that has been purchased only by a few people, then he is not so good as he claims. A game is good according to its sales from a business point of view. So, let's see some number and not talks: bc3k or whatever is called has sold so-many copies resulting in such-and-such profit while it has costs such-and-such. 4) He describes himself as a game Designer/Developer. Once again... If a lot of people have purchased bc3k, using it, keeping it alive by working on it then he is a good designer/developer because he has been able to capture the interest of the people, otherwise he is not. It seems to me one day he compared bc3k with Falcon4... What a nonsense! Falcon universe is wonderfully alive with tens of sites, boards, communities and lots of people spending a lot of their time trying to improve the game (of course Mr. Smart may claim some fan has made a drawing of the "Supreme Commander" or whatever he would like to be called, but this is simply a pathetic thing). 5) He claims "other" games have stolen his ideas, technologies or else. My God... IMHO this is persecution phobia. Mr. Smart, is that really, really true? Then sue them and get millions (or billions :-) of dollars back, otherwise please, really do not say anything. You could as well claim that you have piloted the Space Shuttle, or designed Linux or else: it is worthless and it will make future claims harder to believe! 6) Finally, even if you have been persecuted, misunderstood, treated in an unfair way AND you have 1,2 or even 100 Ph.D. AND you are the President of Mensa AND you are a good designer/developer/producer AND you are so clever and imaginative that people are continously stealing your ideas... What will you gain to treat other people (all potential customers of some of your new and wonderful product) like shit? Why do you do that? Is that good PR? It seems to me you do not really want to produce anything, or sell anything or make other people happy with your games... All you want is to throw shit to other people for one reason or another. Well, this is more or less what I wanted to say. Now I will get most probably get tons of hate-mail from people that have seen "The Light of Derek" and that I will burn in hell and bla bla bla... Get a Life, people. Regards, Paolo