Solitaire, shipped with Windows, might have a case as the most heavily played video game in human history. It’s so tied to computers, Google made sure you could play it no matter where you are. But video game history was created not by a team of experts but by Wes Cherry, a bored intern.
Cherry has a brief fun interview with Great Big Story where he explains how Solitaire came about and how it wound up attached to every copy of Windows shipped. Cherry, it turns out, was fairly busy as an intern but still had lulls in his work. So, in order to kill time, he coded a way to kill time so he could mess around at work. And, apparently, Bill Gates got a shot at it and complained it was too hard to beat the game, so if you ever need to feel intelligent, just remember you’re probably better at Solitaire than Gates. Still, Gates decided to ship it anyway, and the rest is history.
Apparently, the game also had the original “boss button,” something Microsoft decided against including for obvious reasons. Cherry also notes that so far, he’s received a grand total of fourteen cents from his work on Solitaire. So if you’re feeling bad about that, do him a solid and buy some of his cider.
(Via The Verge)