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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.

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I still do play solitaire. I taught a few variations to my kids early on when the pandemic locked us at home. I don't judge either style of game as better or worse than the other... just different. Video games are clearly richer games, but the conversations I had with my family growing up were often while sitting around a table playing card games.

> Video games are clearly richer games

I don't know, if you include Magic the Gathering in the card games pile it's definitely competitive on the "richness"[0] spectrum against most video games.

Though in the current apocalypse, there's been an uptick in video game forms of Magic, and even a sharp rise in people playing over the internet by pointing a webcam at their table.

[0]: Pun not intended, but it's undeniably also expensive...

Several versions of traditional solitaire are extremely deep games when you try and maximize your odds of winning. Video games can be mindless or mind bending puzzles.

Which is why I think lumping all video games into a single category is meaningless. Beat Saber and Minecraft have little in common.

> Beat Saber and Minecraft have little in common.

They're both high profile VR games.

I misread "Minecraft" as "Minesweeper" and was briefly bewildered by the idea of Minesweeper VR. Kinda want to play that now.

I feel like there's so many games that can be VR-ified like this. Even if it's just a first person, point to a square on the floor and click, sort of game, I feel like more innovation can build on top of traditional games like minesweeper starting with that.

Dress it up as bomb disposal, big scary explosion when you mess up, you get uncomfortably thrown into the sky, could be great.

Not a bad idea to refine your VR mechanics, after all, word is that they were added to Windows originally to help people refine their mouse skills

Classic Minesweeper mechanics transposed onto a realistic minefield environment would be amazing.

Complete with Surgeon Simulator-style disarming of the mines!

That would be amazing!

Missing the point. Minecraft started as a creative style game that hit massive popularity in all age groups, and encouraged players to build to their heart's content without much of a goal. It didn't start in VR as well.

Beat Sabor is one of the first "killer app" VR games, with a clear goal with emphasis on reaction time and immersion using the VR tech behind it.

Both are played very differently, the former a game you come back to to refine your work over and over in a creative way, the other using reaction time to score better.

> Missing the point.

Missing the point, or making a joke?

> using reaction time to score better

Having never heard of Beat Sabor, this made me think it sounds like Guitar Hero. YouTube confirms. I really did not ever get the appeal of GH, but BS looks pretty fun.

The problem there is the lack of couch coop in modern titles

What's amazing is that solitaire isn't a single game with a set rules. It's an entire category of card games. The "game developers" of the past were just people agreeing on a set of rules.

True, but my great grandma played the garbage one that was implemented in win3.1

Do you mean Klondike solitaire?

Yes, that one

This is because it was extremely common/popular, which is how it ended up in windows 3.1 in the first place.

I know how it came to be. Doesn't change my mind about it being garbage game. In fact, its popularity is rather my point. Not that garbage computer games aren't being made today, but the choice out there is incredible. Also popular among her generation: the 15 puzzle. Blech.

Speed solving the 15 puzzle is actually quite fun :) I have a few nice physical versions at home, although nothing really compares to the crazy speed I've seen people achieving on computer versions.

Then again, speedcubing (Rubik's cube) is my "main" hobby, and it's a lot deeper and more interesting IMO.

Spider solitaire is my jam. I played it every day of my commute on my phone for a year. Still go back to it sometimes. Definitely need to try other kinds.

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