This is somewhat embarrassing, although pretty easy to admit in public due to the fact that I'd guess that this is also true for 4 out of 5 people reading this, but I think the videogame I've probably played the most in my life is Solitaire on Windows. What's even more bothersome is that by some people's crazy screwed up standards that fact alone might actually technically make it one of my favourite videogames of all time. Oo er.
Okay so maybe not really, I can say with 100% confidence that Solitaire isn't as good as Tetris for example, but it concerns me how much of a time-sink Solitaire still is. Some people swear to Minesweeper as their time murderer of choice, but I've never seen the appeal personally. Minesweeper is more like the videogame equivalent of knitting, something you just of chip away at while the telly's on, but you're knitting rubbish jumpers that only Octodad could wear because it's randomly generated wool, also the jumper occasionally explodes. Maybe this is just my super genius 182 IQ brain talking (Disclaimer: not really) but I find Minesweeper frustratingly easy apart from the bits where it's literally just guesswork, but then I just find it frustratingly bullshit instead.
Having said that, maybe no-one would like Minesweeper if it was difficult. It's different to games like Tetris because you can actually beat it, you can still have a good time with Tetris even if you suck at it. Since I am a human being, and we are silly little things, I regularly push the games on my shelf against the wall to make sure they're all lined up. I hate my copy of Dark Void for the reason, because it has a cardboard sleeve over the box that I don't have the heart to throw away, and that makes it stick out by 0.1 of a centimetre which infuriates me. My box of Dark Void also annoys me because it contains Dark Void. But the point is, Tetris plays to that bit of the human brain that just loves the feel of snapping things together, it's fun just to play around with even if you don't know what you're doing. Minesweeper plays to that bit in the human brain that makes you hoover the entire house because you forgot to bring a plate with you when you ate that sausage roll (you fat pig). It's about getting a board cleared as opposed to actual act of clearing it. Come to think of it, maybe the reason Minesweeper doesn't have that much appeal to me is because I don't find it difficult...so maybe it's just a game for mor..NO BAD PARAGRAPH TOO LONG ALREADY START ANEW.
Solitaire has to be some kind of conspiracy, it's possibly done more damage to the Western economy than the recession did just due to the amount of work hours it's devoured. What's scarier is the fact that it's not immediately obvious why it is so addicting, I don't know, and a brief Google search before writing this sentence implies that not many other people know either. At it's lowest level it's simple guesswork and anyone can beat it occasionally just by brute forcing it (unlike Minesweeper) while at its highest level it is gosh darn algebra. I read somewhere that every game of Solitaire is possible to win, I'm pretty sure that's not true as I've definitely had games load up where it was impossible to make a single move other than cycling through the deck once and the game would declare itself to be over, so there is still a big luck factor involved.
What we have is a game that's easy for anyone to play whether they understand the large amounts of probability related maths going on behind every session or not, that's available on the majority of the world's personal computers, they everyone seems to play but few have any explanation as to why. I do think the fact that it's just there is a huge part of this phenomenon as the game itself, and if Tetris had come packaged with every computer instead the civilised world would have certainly collapsed by now. God, did I just actually write that, maybe Microsoft were showing mercy on us all by choosing Solitaire as the packaged game for their software.
If I had to make a guess at the secret of the actual game's appeal, I think part of it is the "constant tiny decisions" aspect of it, whether to move a card now or have another go-around etc. combined with the bigger decisions, like when you have two cards of identical colour and number and you have to decide which will the best to move based on a little bit of maths (length of columns/amount of cards remaining in the deck) and a little bit of guesswork, mixed in with a little risk/reward of the entirely unnecessary scoring system that rewards you for beating the game in a certain way. These are the parts that make it a "game", but there's also the lack of load times and the cathartic nature of piling the cards on top of each other when you're on a roll, which feels the same whether you know what you're doing or not. However, my real answer to "why is Solitaire so addicting" is still a definite "dude, I dunno ask a psychologist lol".
My real concern is the fact that whether it's a good game or not (I'd argue that it probably is), a lot of people don't seem to enjoy Solitaire but the vast majority play it. There's something creepy about that, and it brings up the issue of games being "addicting". If you're a regular reader of videogame reviews you've probably been indoctrinated with the assumption that a game being "addicting" is a point in its favour, okay maybe that's a benefit to the actual game but not necessarily the user (insert anecdote of Starcraft players not feeding their babies here). Not to say that an addicting game is always a bad thing, but the term "addicting" needs some justification and can't be assumed as a compliment. In any other context "addiction" has connotations of bad health and bad habits, and I see no reason why videogames should get a free pass on that.
I'm not that sure whether Solitaire is a good videogame or not, but I know for a fact that it's a terrifying one.
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