The most successful game ever: a history of Minesweeper | Hacker News Reader

The most successful game ever: a history of Minesweeper

techradar.com

To most of us, mines are just a handy framework to wrap the deductive gameplay around. This isn't the case elsewhere in the world, where they remain a threat, and a symbol of pain and suffering. In 2001, a group calling itself the International Campaign to Ban Winmine attempted to make Microsoft choose something less controversial as its subject matter, and there have been other similar protests over the years.

Is this for real? Wow!

I'll start with "the moral of the story" for me...

I need to stop taking articles so seriously and taking all of the fun out of an otherwise highly nostalgic blast from the past.

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This is an old article (2009).

Even so, I can't imagine that this is true: "Click-for-click, nothing has wasted more time than Minesweeper...."

It's probably just hyperbole to get the point across, but to then come out and say that "The most successful game ever made isn't World of Warcraft"... really can't be said without saying by what qualifications you are saying a game is successful.

- If it's pure mouse clicks, I'm sure a gazillion percent sure that WoW has had more clicks.

- If it is $$$ than that's an easy one too.

- If it's time wasted... then I'm sure it's not Minesweeper either.

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http://www.claymath.org/Popular_Lectures/Minesweeper/

"It's not often you can win a million dollars by analysing a computer game, but by a curious conjunction of fate, there's a chance that you might."

-- prof. Ian Stuart, in a lecture on Minesweeper and P-vs-NP

- If it's time wasted... then I'm sure it's not Minesweeper either.

Do you have any data for it or should we just trust you because you are also gazillion percent sure? Lot more people play minesweeper and solitaire than WoW..

Have you read Drew Curtis's book?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Not_News,_It%27s_FARK:_H...

This is a filler piece, and nothing more.

Another metric for success is reach. For an artist, how many people actually saw your work and judged it is very important.

It's a fun game. I've build a Minesweeper varient that works on a spherical planet with hexes rather than a square grid. http://bit.ly/ycjiGQ It's true that it's a huge timewaster. Since I've released it in Dec. of last year people have played over 600,000 games and spend a combined total of over 8.7 years playing it.

I've never played BeTrapped, but here is an interesting game that is literally Clue / Cluedo combined with Minesweeper. It's not perfect, but it still works surprisingly well.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/nerdook/cluesweeper

Vista? Actually I remember seeing flowers instead of mines in Windows ME already... Am I remembering uncorrectly?

Are you Italian? The Italian versions of Windows ME and Windows 2000 were shipped with flower versions.

Source: http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/Windows_Minesweeper#Windows...

Yep, Italian. So we were the 'lucky' ones. I find this rather absurd, but maybe if I had to live in real minefields I would think in a different way... who knows...

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