Bill Gates’ unusual and hidden addiction that almost brought him down

Bill Gates, one of the technological references of this era, had his weaknesses and his strengths. What few would have imagined is what one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet had video game addiction from its factory.

Since the first versions of Windows, Microsoft has incorporated a number of titles for users to enjoy in their free time. One of the best known is the minesweeperstrategy game that captivated everyone when it appeared in version 3.0 of the operating system.

The game was created by American Curt Johnson for OS/2 and ported to Windows by Robert Donner. It was first released as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack.

However, it was later permanently integrated into Windows 3.x, replacing the traditional Reversi. Minesweeper continued with the operating system until Windows version 8.

Many of these anecdotes are told in the book minesweeper by Kyle Orland, chief entertainment officer at Microsoft. In one of the chapters he tells how the game marked the life of Bill Gates.

The hypnotism for this game has reached so much that one Microsoft employee she had to trick him into leaving him. Bill Gates was about to lose his entire company to the Minefield.

The tycoon became obsessed with mastering the game of minesweeper and reaching the shortest time possibleso much so that, during his working day, he ignored his responsibilities to devote himself to the minigame.

In an attempt to “detox”, he uninstalled the game from his computer. It was then that he began using the machine owned by Mike Hallman, a senior Microsoft executive.

CEO of Microsoft he stayed after office every day to play minesweeper. Even without the game installed on his machine, he spent his weekends at the office breaking every record he came across.

Through an email he boasted that this change of workstation had brought him luck, since in this way he was able to lower his personal best from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.

Bill Gates’ hidden addiction in the 90s

The tycoon’s addiction got to the point that Melinda French called Ryan to ask him not to share minefield records with her husband. Such was the degree of need for Gates that she had begun to feel miss work meetings. The game was ruining him.

To discourage this obsession, Bruce Ryan decided to share “impossible” scores with his boss. To intimidate him, he used an automation program capable of launching millions of games and trying to win with a single click.

Far from resigning, he continued to look for a formula that would cut the times even further. But he couldn’t beat his friend’s score.

Next, Ryan had to reveal his trick and tell him that it was an AI system that was getting those results. Gates was so impressed that he thought so it was no match for an artificial intelligence.

“My critical skills are superseded by a computer. This tech thing is going too far. If machines can do things faster than humans, how can we maintain our human dignity?” Gates thought.