All Work And No Play ...

Clifton Forlines writes: "Jupiter Media Metrix released a report on Monday about PC gaming - here's one of the more interesting tidbits: 'Similar to past years, Microsoft Windows-bundled games dominated the top rankings in October 2001: Solitaire was number one, with 21.3 million users.' A little math tells us that americans spent about 24 million man-hours in October on Solitarie (estimating that each user spent a little more than an hour over the whole month) That corresponds to about 1 million man-days, or around 2740 man-years! For comparison, I looked up these numbers... Empire State Building: 7 million man-hours (a mere 9 days of Solitaire), Panama Canal: 20 million man-hours (a mere 26 days of Solitaire), Apollo project: 15.5 billion man-hours (or a mere 52 years of Solitaire) Think about it!"

Comments

Pot, Kettle, Black

[PD]

Hmmmm. That's amazing. I wonder how many billions of Solitaires go into a single Slashdot?

Think of the man-hours wasted on sex

[typical geek]

If we could just convince all the women that they really don't need orgasms, we could cut down the hours needed for sex to about 5 minutes each time.

Regarding the man-hour comparisons...

[dstone]

Ask yourself this: do you really want the type of person who finds fulfillment playing Solitaire and Minesweeper to divert his/her attention to building the next skyscraper or hydroelectric project? Please, no!

Re:Regarding the man-hour comparisons...

[renehollan]

A socialist friend of mine used that argument to justify a 90-90% unemployment rate: if we could just feed, clothe, and house people who messed up the work we did, we'd be more than 20 times more efficient with the same effort, and could easily afford the astronomical taxes to support the welfare state that would result.

Being a libertarian, I said a few disparaging words upon hearing this suggestion, but I have to admit, he had a point.

Of course the proper counter is, having increased my efficiency 2000% or more, why shouldn't I reap the benefits? Because you didn't stop me? Is that a threat? There are other ways of getting threatening freeloaders out of the way...

What a waste...

[Mike Schiraldi]

This is a disgrace, the way people waste their time at work. It's cheating their employer, too.

I'd write more, but i don't want my boss to see me on Slashdot.

Funny numbers

[snake_dad]

But not that amazing. It just means that if 23 million people each spend one hour digging, the Panama canal could have been finished in less then a month. There would be some elbowing ofcourse, and maybe Panama would have sunk by itself with al those people standing in spot...

The point is, if you choose the statistics that you compare to carefully, you can make anything seem amazing. Compare hours spent playing solitaire to hours spent while brushing teeth, and suddenly he numbers don't seem so amazing anymore.

Solitare is a trainer...

[(H)elix1]

I've found Solitare a great way to introduce the idea of double click, single click, and drag for those who really don't know beans about this computer thing. That app was the moment of zen for my Mom, and I hear others with similar stories.

Kinda Ironic

[dytin]

It's kinda ironic that the subject of the post is "All work and no play...". If anyone remembers the end of that saying, its "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". In other words, people need some time to play, or else they become dull. The funny thing is, the poster rambles on about how much more could have been done for the world if people didn't play. But would the world be worth living in if everyone was dull?

and before Solitare and Mindsweeper...

[Infonaut]

people wasted the same amount of time by:

* watching TV
* masturbating
* sitting around thinking of ways to avoid doing something
* bowling
* watching bowling on TV
* reading Danielle Steel novels
ad nauseum...

People will "waste time" because humans can't work 24/7. We're primates, for Chrissakes.. have you ever seen primates in a zoo? "Wasting time" is all they do!

Video games are just a way of wasting the same amount of time in a different way.

Re:Solitaire? No

[ncc74656]

the mindsweeper game never has any thing that you HAVE to guess at

Given that Minesweeper is NP-complete, are you so sure of that assertion? In a sufficiently-crowded field, you almost always get to some point where you can't deduce from the surrounding squares whether or not there's a mine in a space. You end up guessing and hoping for the best when this happens. I suspect that the Minesweeper where you never have to guess isn't the true Minesweeper.

Re:People spent too much time playing games

[daeley]

IF people could be just ALITTLE more serious, perhaps we wouldnt be having economy trouble, terrorist attacks, problems with virii, hackers, worms.
Instead of using your computer to play stupid games, use your computer to do stuff thats important and play a game no more than a half hour to an hour per week.

You know, most economists and terrorists (meatspace and cyber) I know of are severely serious people. If they had a fscking modicum of playfulness in their bodies, much less a sense of humor, we would probably have a lot fewer recessions and suicide bombers.

Now that we've put economists and terrorists in the same boat, let's throw you in -- a /. flamebait-poster who really needs to get out more and have some fun. ;-)