A wargame blogger returns and DRM drama won't stop him

Real and Simulated Wars was a blog that got me back into writing AAR's after a 2 year hiatus. He also announced that he was going to close his doors yesterday after a few threads that devolved into what amounted to internet bullying on wargaming sites that used to have a much higher standard of conversation.

I started a lot of those threads. I started the thread about Tiller releasing Kharkov 43 on at least 3 sites because I was excited. Imagine a few days later when I returned to see how they have devolved into pointless bitching and pandering about having to enter a serial number to activate a game. I posted about the game on this blog as well.

I wont get into DRM here, it is pointless. I have seen terrible DRM schemes, I have had to suffer with Battlefronts "digital download one year expiration" bullcrap and I have lost discs and rulebooks that required numbers or words to be typed in on certain pages. I use STEAM, I use Impulse. I use them all. If you live your life scared of where a company may be in 20 years you will simply miss a lot of good gaming. Quit being scared of technology and learn to adapt to it. Buying something digitally will involve a serial code sure. In the end we have to have a penalty for all this convenience. However 10 downloads and a now reprised two separate installs is hardly worth taking a blogger and casual forum posters to task over.

DRM has existed in one way or another over the course of gaming history (Battle of Britain code wheel anyone?) so people just need to get over it. What gets me is that other games have MUCH HARSHER penalties (I don't see myself needing to be on the internet to activate the Tiller game, but Scourge of War requires a live connection and an immediate upload) yet you do not see them getting lambasted on the forums. The mods on the forums do nothing to shut these threads down either when they degrade into pointless name calling and slandering. That is perhaps what disappointed me the most. You don't see this sort of thing going on over at the boardgaming community at Consimworld do you? No. You don't (and yes I know boardgamers don't have DRM to deal with but they have much more gaming focused conversations). Boardgamers do have their own version of political drama and things of the sort but at least it is shoved off into a different area. Threads about DRM should be confined to one post that allows multiple responses and this garbage should not be allowed to spill over into other venues.

I haven't checked my threads. I don't care about them anymore. The vocal minority and "good ole boy" clubs that now infest the forums are something I will just avoid. I will simply take my questions and posts to game specific fan sites and move on. At any rate KUDOS to you Real and Simulated Wars for hanging in there. We all look forward to more wargaming contributions in the future.

To the people that took three separate threads from a gamer excited about a new wargame being released and being able to get them digitally (something that the lack of really infuriated me about HPS) and devolved them into a name calling suck fest: to manners class for you all. And to the mods that refuse to clean up the posting dreck on your boards and steer the community toward actual gameplay and game discussion: shame on you.