I have several problems with computer "board" games.

First, they don't ever look as good as the board games. Most computer screens aren't large enough and of a high enough resolution to display the entire arena. You end up with awkward scrolling mechanisms or sector selection mechanisms to handle large play fields. With a board you always have a good view of the entire game.

They have no collector value. The fact that they are easier to copy, they don't come with play pieces, they don't come with a nice board, etc, makes them less valuable in the long run. You can still get money for an old AH game in good condition.

They have no physical equipment. Part of the attraction of playing board games (or tactical simulation with miniatures) is the tactile aspect. It's fun to position the play pieces. It's fun to collect, examine, and admire miniatures. Often they have artistic value on their own. Computer games lack all of this. There's no tactile satisfaction. A good Go table is designed with a hollow bottom so that you can hear a satisfying click when you place your stones.

Good players learn to place their stones loudly to convey confidence. Everyone likes the feel of a nice Chess set. Everyone is amazed at the detail in D&D figures. Everyone likes to move the chits in tactical simulations. I have a glass Pente board that always gets an "Oooh" when I bring it out. It looks great with the glass Pente stones on it. I know that AH games don't tend to be so fancy, but they still have a very satisfying tactile aspect to them. Rolling the dice is fun. Collecting dice is fun. Just having physical equipment is fun. What would we be collecting? Bits?

They are missing the social aspect. It's hard to have more than two players. When I played lots of D&D, we always made sort of a party out of it. Even games that can be played over a modem don't really allow enough interaction between the players. You want to see the opponents face. It's even worse when the opponent is a machine and doesn't have a face. Eventually, modems will become fast enough and bandwidth will become cheap enough to allow players to freely interact while they're playing games over the modem, but that's far off. Eventually, you'll be able to play multi-player tactical simulations over cable, but I doubt it will ever be as cheap as having a bunch of people over to play around a board. There is a place for multi-player computer games (look at DOOM), but there will be a place for board games for a long time because of the social aspect.

They have low intelligence. Computers and the AI algorithms they run aren't powerful enough yet to compete with humans in games that have a high degree of freedom. They can do very well in games with fairly narrow search trees (e.g, Chess), but it will be a while before they become worthy opponents in tactical simulations. They might do well initially, before you've learned what kind of player they are and become familiar with the tactics of a specific game, but they won't offer the lasting challenge that you can get from a group of humans as in a game club.

You need a special type of computer to use them. If you don't have the computer for which they're written, you're out of luck. Forget the argument about which computer is better. If AH only makes games for computer A, computer B users (and anyone who doesn't own a computer - there are a FEW of those out there) will be out of luck.

Computers are often an inappropriate medium. My kids love Battle Masters, but you can bet that they would be bored to death with the computer version if it didn't have lots of sounds and animated graphics. Most of the programming effort would go into making the game more exciting on the small screen. This ties in to what I said earlier about tactile satisfaction.

There is a place for computers in board games. They could help roll up NPCs in RPGs, for instance. They could help resolve complex battles. They could keep track of inventories and hit points. In D&D, I could see the DM sitting behind a computer instead of a propped up DM Guide.

The computer could have all the guides on-line, keep track of NPC and monster hit points, maintain the map, etc. Basically, computers should be used to do what they're best at -- compute. They shouldn't be used to replace the board and the pieces.

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