Ever heard of Minesweeper? Or maybe you've played this default Windows game. The game is simple, but quite addicting.
One of the people who are addicted to playing Minesweeper is Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. This game, which has been around since Windows 3.0 released in the early 1990s, was specially written by journalist Kyle Orland, and one of the stories in it is how Gates got so addicted to playing this game.
Minesweeper first appeared on Microsoft's internal network in 1990, and many Microsoft employees at that time immediately became addicted to playing it. "This is the most widely tested software at Microsoft," explained Charles Fitzgerald, product manager for the first Windows Entertainment Pack, one of which contained Minesweeper.
In the end, the boss of Microsoft at that time was also hooked on Minesweeper, namely Bill Gates. "Bill (Gates) is also addicted," he added, as quoted by us from PC Gamer, Monday (6/3/2023).
"At first, I thought I got an email from Bill saying 'I just finished [Beginner] Minesweeper in 10 seconds. Was that great?'" said Bruce Ryan, Microsoft's product manager at the time.
"I replied to his email and said 'Yes, 10 seconds is great. But it feels like the current record is eight (seconds)'. Apparently, the record information that was close to his record was made a mission for him to beat," explained Ryan.
Gates was so addicted to Minesweeper that he had to delete the game from his PC. Keep in mind, at that time, the record for the highest score in the game could only be seen from the PC where it was played. Cannot be seen from another PC because the game is not connected to the network.
"So one Sunday afternoon, we got an email from Bill saying, 'Hey, I think I just broke a new record. This is on Mike Hallman's (former Microsoft president) PC,'" added Ryan.
The fact that Orland emphasizes in his book is how Gates, the founder and boss of a company that later became one of the biggest companies in the world, can get addicted to simple games like Minesweeper. In fact, you could say Gates at that time did not have free time to play games.
To the extent that Melinda Gates asked Ryan not to respond to Bill's record scores in Minesweeper and not to give a score record to be broken. The reason is Melinda thinks Bill plays too much, and that's not good for Microsoft.
"(This) is not a good thing. There are many decisions that must be made by Bill, and this (Minesweeper) should not waste his time," explained Ryan.
Finally Ryan took an "important" decision for Microsoft. He is looking for a way to record the highest score that no human can solve without cheating.
Ryan uses a Macro Recorder (software that can automatically click according to what is recorded by the user) to trick the game. Namely by clicking on a box in the corner and then clicking on the option to start a new game. The hope is that the randomly appearing mine is in a corner and Ryan can win the game in one second or less.
Without macros, nobody should be able to break this record.
"So I set it up there and left it a day for meetings. Then four hours later, it had won (within one second) when I left. I find it very efficient to be able to do this when I'm not in the office," concluded Ryan.
Then he took a screenshot of the one second record and sent it to Gates. "Sorry, your five second record is permanently lost because I don't think you can beat one second," Ryan wrote to Gates at the time.
Gates responded to this defeat by confiding in Microsoft employees. He told how his ability to play Minesweeper was inferior to software macros.
"My important skills were eclipsed by computers. This technology has gone too far. When machines can do things faster than humans, how can we maintain human dignity?" Gates complained in an email to Microsoft employees.
According to Ryan, Gates' email is very poetic. What's more, at that time, most emails were written arbitrarily, for example, in unclear language and typos. "(Gates) really thought about this. It's like he wrote something for a tombstone or something," concluded Ryan.