In the predictable reaction among politicians to the Columbine High School shooting, some of the public figures least qualified to advise anyone on right and wrong behavior have started their rants against those "violent, disgusting" computer games. Such games, supposedly, now join arcade games, Dungeons & Dragons ™, violent movies, billiards, and the discovery of fire as panic-inducing causes of degeneracy among the young. Those of us who simulate panoramas of cardboard carnage are all too familiar with the reactions of those whom the notion of war as a hobby strikes as rather strange. It doesn't help much that we sometimes have a hard time explaining why we, mostly peaceful guys, enjoy studying and playing with war. One wargaming veteran, though, has written an intelligent essay on the nature and appeal of "violence gaming."
The writer is Greg Costikyan, whom SPI fans surely remember, and the essay is available at Salon: http://www.salonmagazine.com/tech/feature/1999/06/21/game_violence/index.html (If the article doesn't show up there, search the Salon archives.)
On the topic of on-line addresses, here's the up-to-date contact info for The Gamers. Email addresses are: Dean@tgamers.com, Sara@tgamers.com, Shirley@tgamers.com, Sandi@tgamers.com, rules@tgamers.com (specifically for rules questions), letters@tgamers.com (for general information), and opsed@tgamers.com (anything having to do with Operations). The Web site is www.tgamers.com. These are new addresses; please stop using the old ones with the earthlink.net domain.
Here's a good opportunity for me to encourage letters to the editor, either electronic or paper. The Gamers email list generates lively traffic, and I used it once to solicit input for an article ("Good Things in Small Packages," Ops 30). But folks just don't seem to be writing to the editor. I do not "repurpose" material (like e-mail postings) without permission from the author to use it as a letter to the editor. And the fact that you have not seen a letters column in this magazine recently does not mean that I've decided against printing letters; it does mean I need some letters. Thanks to Brad Young for writing (see page 4) C'mon, The Gamers is one of those few companies, more common within wargaming than in the marketplace at large, that really means it when we say we care about our customers. So drop us -- and your fellow readers -- a note with your thoughts and opinions.
Of particular interest to me are your opinions on Operations. It has been quite a while since issue 20, when I buffed up the magazine's look, and many of the features have remained pretty much the same for even longer. You'll notice, for example, that I'm cheating more than ever to squeeze into the ratings chart all the games that have at least 10 votes. How useful do you find the chart? It it time for me to trim the list by enforcing the old-games rule? Or are some of the old games still touchstones? Are there particular subjects you'd like to see covered in article? How about articles you don't like? And if you have your own ideas about what should be in the mag, does that mean you're working on articles of your own? What parts of the mag are the most (and least) useful to you?
Here's hoping you find something in this issue to suit your interests. If you'd like to spend a little time alone with a game, Lee Forester challenges you with another tactical problem from A Raging Storm. Also good for solitaire is Mike Stohlmeyer's historically grounded variant for Malvern Hill. To get you in the mood for face-to-face play, we present enough coverage of both HomerCon Europe and Origins to get you fired up for HomerCon.
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