The Microsoft intern who invented Solitaire didn’t make a cent from the iconic game

The man behind Microsoft’s Solitaire didn’t make a single cent from the popular game.

IT’S quite possibly the most played computer game in the world, but the man who created it didn’t make a cent.

Thanks to Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system, if you used a personal computer in the past two decades, you almost certainly played Solitaire.

But what do you know about the not-so-famous man behind the game?

It turns out Wes Cherry was an intern at Microsoft in 1988 when he developed the game in the spare hours he had on the job, largely because he was bored.

Despite Solitaire becoming one of the most recognisable games in the Western world, its creator — who now owns a cidery — has remained largely unknown to the general public. But in an interview with Great Big Story this month, he recalled how he came up with the iconic card game.

“I came up with the idea to write Solitaire out of boredom really,” he said. “There wasn’t really many games at the time, so we had to make them.”

Microsoft said the inclusion of the game in its operating system was to help people learn how to use their mouse — still a rather novel concept at the time.

“But in reality, it was just something to have fun with,” Mr Cherry said.

These days computer gaming is big business and even rivals the financial might of Hollywood but “I didn’t make a single cent” from the popular game, he lamented.

Microsoft first included Solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990 just as personal computers began showing up in people’s homes.

For those who grew up playing on computers, the game is basically second nature. But to give you an idea about just how far computer gaming has come, before it went public Microsoft founder Bill Gates played Solitaire and had one criticism: it was too hard.

To be fair to Bill, depending on the deal, the game can be impossible to complete.

Before the internet became what it is today, the card game was seen by many office workers as the ultimate procrastination tool.

“The number of wasted hours on Solitaire is really countless,” Mr Cherry said. In fact, he (only half jokingly) suggested its release could’ve helped contribute to a global financial downturn.

“I can say that right after Solitaire was released in 1990, there was a world recession,” he said.

So the moral of the story is you’re not the only who wasted countless hours playing Solitaire, and you might even be better at it than Bill Gates.

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• November 2nd 2016
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