What's the most popular video game ever made? Tetris? Pokemon? The Sims? Nope - according to a Slate article published this week, it's Solitaire. Included by default on every single Windows PC in the world, Solitaire has been a popular diversion for bored office workers for decades, even causing New York office worker Ed Greenwood to be fired when city mayor Michael Bloomberg spotted him playing it on the clock.
And if we're honest, if we had bosses like Bloomberg, we'd probably have been fired by now too. A 1994 Washington Post article details Solitaire's development motivation: apparently, when designing Windows 3.0, Microsoft execs wanted to include a simple game that would relax computing newcomers. What's more familiar than a pack of cards? The game also provided a surreptitious way to train users in the click-and-drag concepts fundamental to the new age of graphical user interfaces without them feeling patronized or getting bored.
