A horrid weeklong writing drought is over. I was out of town having one top developer rap for me, another bench press 300 pounds, and some other stuff I can't write about just yet.

So I'm back, with a GameFile. This one's mostly an attempt by me to figure out how non-gamers can physically come to grips with games like "Grand Theft Auto" that are, quite frankly, alienating in their difficulty to control. I talked to some pretty smart people in gaming to see what kind of curriculum they would assign. I thought people should start with "Tetris" or "Pac-Man." They thought otherwise. Take a look and try to figure this one out. After all, who hasn't seen a non-gamer stumble hopelessly through a 3d game or an FPS, struggling to run and look in the proper direction at the same time. How do you school these people?

And in other GameFile news, Brian Crecente's recent report about Sony's black book on gaming journalists inspired me to reveal the details of the black book that I retrieved literally from a garbage pail at the end of this year's E3. Hit the link and check the bottom of my column to get the goods.