"I got da hook-up!"

"You gotta get into it. You gotta feel the way in and them boom! The hook-up. Then you go like a train!". An early '50's NFL star explains his (complex!) philosophy. And he has a point that we can apply to gaming and computing as well. It's all in that moment. You probably know the feeling. The hook-up. The moment when you get immersed in a game. When you've just got to kill that last Mongol Archer. You've got the Stars to the playoff final but Detroit just rang one in off the post (Game Seven, 3-2 down in the last period!). That final boss. By the time you snap out, your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/cat (delete as appropriate) has left you, the Phillies have lost two straight on the road (again!) and someone has finally proven that Wyoming doesn't exist. But what is this hook? Or perhaps a better question is what stops all games reeling you in (Oh my cod! Geddit?).

Well, it's in the interface. The place where man and machine meet (No, not in a Pamela Anderson / Tommy Lee way). According to a recent (British) survey, some games fail because "players feel that they cannot bond with their computer sufficiently to sustain a relationship". Okaaay. (If you're thinking kinky right now, shame on you!). But seriously, most of you will have tried to play a get into a game and just thought "Oh, screw this. It's impossible to play".

I was using Microsoft Plan recently. Not a game, admittedly, but still a major product by a company aiming to make it big in the games industry. And Oh my God! Don't ask why I wanted to create a simple one-sheet Gantt chart, but I did (okay!).

And it took for ever! The interface was unhelpful to the point of actually being obstructive, the help file was stupefyingly unhelpful (to quote (and slightly twist) britcom Red Dwarf "what is a help file if it can't help you?" The answer, by the way, is "a total pain in the ass". Three brownie points if you got that one!). And the thing which really pissed me off was that we're talking Microsoft here! They have a wide range of good products, and it's not like they're an underfunded, short-handed start up or anything? They have obscene amounts of money, brilliant programmes and a reputation to protect. Then they insult us with crap like "Clipit. The interactive office assistant". We're not three, we don't like dancing paperclips, and we don't want to waste time "asking Clipit questions" to get either "Sorry. I don't understand" or the links to the same boneheaded help files.

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