Allan Varney checks in at the ESCAPIST

Varney, the designer of GLOBBO and Illuminati: Mind Freeze (aka Illuminati expansion set 3) wrote a nice general survey article about the problem of the lack of human players in your home town and how the internet is providing technology to counter the problems of physical separation.

Most of the article is a survey of available PBEM utilities and programs (such as Cyberboard, ADC2, and Vassal), most of which I already knew about. I thought it was a pretty good article but incredibly pessimistic about paper based wargaming, which I absolutely disagree with Mr. Varney on. I'm a little ticked about the "Elite" attitude demonstrated by console and PC programmers towards our hobby. check this out:

It would take a miracle to pull the wargame community back from imminent oblivion. But you know, military history is full of unlikely last-ditch victories. Wargamers should try for one of their own.

With all due respect to Allan V., whose work I enjoy (especially Paranoia).. maybe he should have done some homework (over on CONSIMWORLD) before letting fly like this broadside. The very hobby he is issuing a postmortem for in this article has been greatly reinvigorated by the advent of the Internet technologies described in detail therein. It's certainly true that we aren't enjoying a cornucopia of new releases these days, but respectable companies such as GMT and Avalanche are pulling of 2 or 3 products a quarter, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

I remember the days of SPI and AH (naturally), and people seem to forget that with all the gems being made in those days, there were PLENTY of turkeys...