I was at Firaxis yesterday, mostly tagging along with a fellow scribe as he worked on a preview of an upcoming game. He had a chance to talk to Mr. Meier about a wide range of things. One of the topics touched on was how nice it would be to just plop a disk into a computer and have the game just start. You know, like a console game.

At the time, I smirked a little on the inside, mostly because I don’t usually have enormous problems installing games. We have a wide range of machines with a wide range of abilities. I like this flexibility and the install time gives me opportunity to read the manual.

But today I spent well over 90 minutes trying to get a single game to install. First the game was on a 16x DVD-R, so that ruled out the first machine. So I moved up a level and the installer kept starting and stopping. Starting and stopping. Sometimes not starting at all.

Then it started well, but prompted me to register. No problem. I always register. This crashed the install.

Finally I get it on the computer. But wait – it has to update my DirectX. Actually, it doesn’t since we keep Dx up-to-date at all times, but games now require that you use their Dx installer. Fine.

Oh, and it’s Starforce. So it has to install “additional libraries”. Install those. But before I can play, I need to reboot so that installation can complete.

Done. Everything installed. This being a press review copy, I put in the “start disk” (some European thing…) so I can actually launch the game.

“The code you have is invalid or incorrect. Please enter a code or contact customer service.”

Code? CODE!? There is no code on any of the stuff they sent me.

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed.