Well, the US and Australians will be able to. Once, many moons ago, the citizens of Hull in Yorkshire (yes, I know it's technically Humberside) could also have been in the elite vanguard when they were provided with free local calls, but that has now gone by the wayside. This leaves the rest of the UK multiplayer community sitting around a single three-PC LAN in Frome playing Quake and putting on foreign accents in a feeble attempt to generate that feeling of cosmopolitan community. They know in their heart of hearts that they want to reach out and kill; they understand that the only way to get a British team into the 2004 Olympics is to take on foreign competition. They're also aware that the UK telecommunications industry doesn't want this.

As part of NATO, the UK government, in cahoots with the Irish Dail, have been told that UK games players must be individuals. Team play is not part of the gameplan. NATO want single-minded, antisocial, droid players who can fight at ungodly hours, having lived on a diet of caffeine, chocolate, pizza and chips. The fix is in. You are never, ever going to get cheap phone calls, therefore you are never, ever going to be able to truly play multiplayer, Wireplay gaming. It's a conspiracy, so why not gang up with your mates and sort it out?

PC Gaming
Stepping gingerly around Wireplay and its glorious camaraderie, we move into the area of games most beloved of our readers... the PC. Despite what the speed-freaking, attention deficit disordered cult of the console might like to gabble, the real development of games has always been on the kind of platform that can deliver more than simple, troglodyte, punch-the-joypad-and-hope kind of entertainment. As far back as the God-given Amiga, the multi-purpose machine has had the lead over its, let's be fair, less talented siblings.

The PC gamer is someone who likes to be in command. Face it, the PC gamer is a control freak. He needs to know why a game is loading and how the sounds are being made, and he isn't scared of novelty. Hell, if a developer wants to release several hundred control patches in order to modify a documented feature (or 'bug', as these imaginative pieces are misnomered), the PC gamer feels no trepidation. Why? Because the PC, and here we include the Mac, was created by control freaks for control freaks. And what else are control freaks good at? Here are some clues: Rommel, Montgomery, Stormin' Norman, Napoleon, Alexander the Great. Get it? They make great, psychotic, military leaders. They don't just want to know why to blow something up, they need to know how, where and when (see Command & Conquer, Caesar, North vs South, Popluous... I could go on).