TITLE
Minesweeper, Solitaire, and a ’90s Moral Panic
AUTHOR
Kyle Orland
PUBLICATION
Reason
YEAR
2023
ARTICLE TYPE
Book Excerpt
FROM THE ARTICLE
Over-the-top violence in such video games as Mortal Kombat and Doom drew hand-wringing moral outrage from worrywart parents and government scolds throughout the ’90s. Minesweeper—in which players click around a rectangular grid of squares trying to avoid hidden mines, using logical rules to interpret numbers—seemed like it should be safe from controversy.Yet somehow the game was central to a minor moral panic that formed around pre-installed computer games as Windows spread through offices in the ’90s. Together, Minesweeper and Solitaire were seen as an unwelcome office distraction at best and a dire threat to worker productivity at worst.
GAMES MENTIONED
Minesweeper
PRINT AVAILABILITY
November 2023
EXCERPTED FROM
Boss Fight Books – Minesweeper
SEE ALSO
How Bill Gates’ Minesweeper addiction helped lead to the Xbox – Ars Technica (2023)
The Fierce Microsoft Battle That Led To One Of The Biggest Video Games Of All Time – Kotaku (2023)
How do you monetize Minesweeper? – GamesIndustry.biz (2023)