Bill Gates couldn’t get Minesweeper out of his head while running Microsoft, says a book.
Bill Gates , one of the richest men in the world, had a curious addiction while he was at the helm of Microsoft .
It is a fairly simple game: Minesweeper , as told in the homonymous book “ Minesweeper” by Kyle Orland.
In the book, Bruce Ryan, former director of entertainment at Microsoft , tells how the game marked the life of Bill Gates .
Bill Gates became obsessed with the game, particularly its Beginner level. Despite having uninstalled minesweeper from his computer to “detox,” Gates later boasted in an email how he managed to drop his personal record from 8 seconds to 5 seconds on the computer of Mike Hallman, a senior Microsoft executive .
Computers against Bill Gates
Bruce Ryan decided to cheat to discourage Bill Gates by sharing “impossible” scores.
Ryan used an automation program that could launch millions of games and seek to win with a single click.
Four hours later, he achieved his goal: he achieved a second as the new record, which he bragged to Bill Gates , whom he told he would be “permanently eclipsed.”
Gates reflected in a work email after announcing that “his critical skills have been displaced by a computer”: “When machines can do things faster than people: can we retain our human dignity?”
Apparently, he wouldn’t give up anyway. She cautioned, “I guess now I’ll have to try the game at Intermediate level.”