Why Windows Solitaire Eats So Much Time

An anonymous reader writes "This article suggests that Windows Solitaire may be the most-often played computer game. It's not so much an article about Solitaire, but rather an article about Windows and human nature and socialization. If you play FreeCell, there's a interesting paragraph about its inventor." Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?

Comments

Origins of Solitaire?

[Eastree]

I don't have any proof, but I'll still tell:

A few years ago I was cleaning out the records room where I worked. Among all the old manuals of long dead software, I found a four floppy install set of Windows 3.1 (or 3.1.1? It was a very long time ago). On its list of features was Solitaire, listed as mouse practice software of all things. Needless to say, a joke quickly circulated in the office, that we weren't playing games; we were training for better hand-eye coordination with a computer mouse.

That aside, if anyone has an old copy, or knows of an image online, I would very much appreciate the correlation of ecidence.

It is an addiction

[CliffEmAll]

I loathe Freecell. I also play an average of 3 or 4 games of it a day. I don't think I get any satisfaction from the act of playing or from winning, but it has become the primary opportunity to shut off my brain for a moment or two between tasks. I cannot count the number of times I have opened the game, then closed it because I could find no motivation to play, then re-opened it and played a game 15 minutes later. In the meantime, I could be reading /. or wikipedia or playing a real game, but none of these other diversions quite fill the short-term, no thought required niche that the hated Solitaire game does. There is something seriously wrong with me ...

Re:It is an addiction

[mauthbaux]

When I was in school, i had to totally remove freecell from my computer. It got to the point where it was impacting my GPA. Yes. Seriously.

I'd sit down to write a paper and get in a sentence or two. Just as soon as I didn't immediately know what to type in next, I'd open freecell and start a game. 2 hours later, I might have only written a few more words. It was bad enough that starting up the program became instinctive (thank you windows "most recent programs used" list). I distinctively remember catching myself on several occasions where I didn't remember starting up the game; much less what I was supposed to be doing instead. Of course, once you had started a game, you had to finish it. Heaven forbid you quit the game half way through and damage your winning streak.

7 months without the game, and I more or less lost interest in freecell. Instead, I've ended up playing a lot of Go. (no, I'm no afiliated or pushing an agenda here; just merely admitting to my most recent game addiction.) As of yet, it's not as bad as solitaire or freecell.

Honestly tho, I think I just feel like I need to be addicted to *something*. It would probably be World of Warcraft if that one would load up a little faster.

It's the ultimate casual game

[CurtMonash]

One virtue of solitaire over most other computer games is that it's not time-based. You can play for exactly as long as you want to. You don't need to finish a level in the time allotted, kill the aliens before they land, play a word before your opponent gets annoyed with you, or anything like that. You have complete control of the gaming schedule.

One can have similar experiences from playing board games vs. computer opponents, or from the crafting aspect of MMOs. But solitaire is by far the simplest way of achieving them.

Re:Can It?

[kesuki]

"Can Solitaire really eat up more hours than have been sacrificed to Tetris?"

On a Per-Person level, I think there are more people that have spent 20 hours in a day playing Tetris, than Windows Solitaire.

But, I think more people play Solitaire than play(ed) Tetris, so collectively its more hours. I think you missed the tag line from TFA "Chen, the company's usability research crew discovered that the three most-played computer games solitaire or something else, Microsoft or otherwise, preloaded or user-installed) are, in order Spider Solitaire, Klondike Solitaire, and Free Cell."

now personally, i have over 13,000 games of WC3TFT, which translates to roughly 135.416*(infinitely repeating 6s) days of warcraft 3... and i know free cell is probably not even the second game, for my list, that right belongs to the first (us release) of Advance wars, with well over 1000 hours (over 41 days straight) free cell isn't even my third favorite game, I've probably only done 500 hands of it in total, but i am an atypical player.

It makes me wonder, how exactly did Microsoft figure out which programs are used the most? does windows XP and later 'phone home' the top 10 most launched applications? if it does that, that number can be skewed, if the Microsoft coded apps are going by 'games played' using built in statistics, then how can they compare to ordinary video games that don't provide these statistics to Microsoft? after all, i would only launch wc3 once a day, and get in as many as 50 games a day... but if the statistics are of launching the application, I've known some people who 'think' they get better game hands by exiting and restarting free cell than by normal means of getting a new game...

seriously How is Microsoft getting their numbers?!?

* = based on an average game length of 15 minutes, but my average game length might be longer, i can't recall and the statistics are only for one season, not the whole time I've been a warcraft player.

Re:Perfect steps...

[kesuki]

Linux solitaire(AisleRiot) has everything from Agnes to Zebra! not 'just' spider, Klondike, and free cell... which windows implements through three separate executables?!? for simple card games?!? you need 3 game engines to play cards?!?! crazy man crazy...

Re:Can It?

[slyn]

You figuring that out makes me think of Xfire, which tracks the amount of time played by people who have the Xfire client installed.

Some quick calculations using stats from the xfire site show that on today, a non-holiday sunday, approximately 44 man-years of time have been played only in the game World of Warcraft. Not to mention that leaves out all Mac WoW'ers (we do exist), and ever so rare wine linux WoW'ers. And even on top of that, all the people who did play on windows today but don't have the Xfire client installed.

Re:Screw Card Games!

[Imsdal]

This is completely false. There are 32K different "semirandom" games, and one of them is not solvable. And they are of course not "deconstructed". How would you "deconstruct" a Freecell game?
The unsolvable game is #11,982. (And yes, I know that it hasn't formally been proved to be unsolvable, but there are a zillion solvers out there and all of them has failed, so for all practical purposes it is unsolvable.)