I don't know anything about this smart guy but I just read a post saying that Executive Producer Alex Mayberry has left the company basing this information on his having updated an end date to his linkdin CIG job profile.
I checked and he has an end date listed as june 2015 for his employment. That's pretty weak confirmation but it's there
This was interesting to me when I first read about it over the weekend. I've only really been following this game since around January, so it wasn't real clear to me who this Alex Mayberry was, and why this was a "big deal." Turns out, Mayberry was a big deal when CR signed him onto the team because he was a hotshot producer from Blizzard that was in charge of some pretty big games, most notably Diablo III. Funny thing is, most of the community was very unhappy about CR hiring him because of the same thing - Diablo III and the clusterfuck that it was at launch. In fact, many armchair devs hold Mayberry responsible for things like REC and the ever-inflating ship sales and micro transactions.
Well here's my take on things: Mayberry rose through the ranks at Blizzard, going from one successful IP to another, and I'm really not sure how responsible he is for the successes of those IPs, being one producer out of many on most of them. CR hired him at the peak of his career, to work for a studio that was relatively small at the time. Since then, CIG has grown to 300 employees, plus another 200 contractors or so. CIG has started to attract a lot more attention and has since gathered a lot more talent under it's roof, including people like Todd Papy from Crytek. With high profile professionals developing parts of the game, including a whole office full of serious German motherfuckers, don't you think, internally, it starts to become obvious who belongs and who's faking it? I'm not saying I know for sure, but I think Alex Mayberry was in over his head. Here's a guy who has an AA degree in liberal arts and has kind of climbed up in the industry because he was attached to a couple big IPs from a successful company. In fact some of the ideas for those IPs that have drawn the most criticism were his. Who would you blame for many missed internal deadlines if not the executive producer on a project? I think CR was pressured by some of the more recent, serious talent that has joined the company to start cutting the fat, and he was forced to admit that Mayberry was a mistake from day one.
Edit:
Regarding Derek Smart, this is from the Reddit thread:
I just found this on one of his game's steam pages:
In reference to "Interstellar Citizens":
Guy:
That was a really good read. Thanks. Was there ever any chance that you could have been involved it Star Citizen? Would seem like that would have been a good teamup.
DSmart:
Well, they never reached out to me. If they had, I would have gladly been involved in that game, and they would've benefited from my experience I think.
Sounds like sour grapes to me.