Games are installing correctly, but not really?????

Hi:

I've loaded 2 games in the last week - BioShock and World of Conflict
- and by all accounts the games installed correctly, i.e., no error
notices, weird terminations of the install, etc. But, in both cases
the install programs did not create desktop icons and are not listed
when I click Start > All Programs. I can navigate to the folders
where the games are installed and click on the program and the games
will start up OK, but I'm mystified by the lack of folders/icons on
the desktop or start menu since just about every program I've ever
installed under any version of Windows have created these entries.

Can anybody comment on what's going on here?

TIA

Tom Young