algernon posts

We are down to the last days of the baseball season. Any predictions on who will win the World Series?

• New Steam bug updates are now available for Fallen Earth and Worms Reloaded.
• Gamasutra has a new (and funny) post-mortem for the hit indie game AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.
• Civilization IV's catchy theme song now has some lyrics. Really.
• You can read or listen to an except from the upcoming novel of Star Wars The Force Unleashed II.
• Derek Smart gives his very detailed version of the timeline of his involvement in the ongoing Alganon MMO saga.

One of the more controversial folks in PC game development is Derek Smart. Founder of the development studio 3000AD he's best known for the space-based games like Battlecruiser, Universal Combat and others. He's also known for his rather frank and open opinions about the PC game industry and other subjects. More recently he has turned to making smaller downloadable sci-fi action games like All Aspect Warfare and Angle of Attack, both of which were released in 2009.

Now Smart has a new gig to flex his muscles. This week, in a bit of a surprise, Smart has been brought to be the new President of Quest Online, an Arizona-based game developer that has been trying for the past few years to launch a fantasy MMO called Alganon. In fact, as our sister site Massively reported, the game actually launched last December. However issues with the game itself and its switching over from a subscription-based model to a free-to-play model have cause the game's dev team to retroactively change their launch date to early April 2010 (December was just a "soft launch). It will be interesting to see if Smart's extensive experience in making games will turn this MMO around. According to Quest Online's web site he will still be president of 3000AD where his current project is a space-based MMO called Galactic Command Online.