Students
Addicting Solitaire
Solitaire
Many times I have walked through the halls at work and seen that spread of electronic cards on a colleague’s monitor that is the telltale sign they’re playing Solitaire and I know I am not the only one who has fallen victim to telling myself, just one more game and then I’ll get back to work. The game has been around for over 240 years (according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitaire) is also called Patience and has many versions with their own rules. This game has successfully made the leap from a physical deck of cards to the electronic versions. The most popular currently are Klondike and Free Cell which come standard with Microsoft Windows, however many other forms can be downloaded free from the internet.
In considering motivation for this blog post, I couldn’t help but think, what makes electronic Solitaire so addictive? For the most part it lacks competition, since by the very nature of the name, one only competes with themselves. Of course, the software will keep score which is weighted by time and the number of moves it took to complete the game and compare it to previous scores. The greatest motivation is the challenge, an intrinsic motivation written about by Malone and Lepper in Making Learning Fun: A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning. Successful completion of the game requires not only skill, but also luck, hence there will never be complete mastery. There is always a chance the cards are dealt in a manner impossible to win with. Lastly, the availability of the game continues its success – even the least computer savvy person knows Solitaire is located somewhere on every computer and that familiar deck of cards can be very comforting.
Klondike
December 7th, 2009 at 1:24 am
I totally agree with you about the whole Solitaire game. It is all about the challenge. You get the deck shuffled out and your are just hoping that the deck you have will get you to complete the game. However you never know if the cards dealt will really get you to the ultimate goal of completing the game.
There is one thing however that I think you overlooked with Solitaire on the computer…you do not have to shuffle the cards in real life and set-up the game…what a pain!
December 7th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
I’m also a heavy solitaire player but I prefer the card version to the computer game. For me the game comes down to how you shuffle the cards, if your hot, you keep the same shuffle, if your cold, you start trying all kinds of weird shuffles to get back on track. You know its all luck, but it is very satisfying when you win and usually you have an opportunity to do something clever with the cards that sends you over the top so you also feel smart as well as lucky. I think that’s why it is so popular after all these years.
December 8th, 2009 at 12:39 am
I think I have learned to overcome my Solitaire addiction. Many times I have spent hours on end playing this game, almost compulsively. I prefer the computer version mainly because it is faster than the manual option. Also when I’m on my computer, I provide the illusion that I am working where if I was playing the card version, it would be very obvious that I was goofing off. To your point, I think it is the combination luck, skill, and strategy (and the undo button) that keeps me playing. You never know how the game is going to go but because it is so simple, you walk in with a high sense of the ability to win the game.
December 8th, 2009 at 1:18 am
My first thought when I saw the title “Solitaire” was the board game I played as a child. We used to call it simply as solitaire, which is called more descriptively as peg solitaire. Peg solitaire has nothing to do with the card game. It involved movement of pegs on a board with holes. The goal of the game was to remove all the pegs from the board. I remember a list that classified you from “super brain” (if you finished the game with one peg) to “stupid” (if you finished with 9 pegs remaining). Anyway, it was a game with a solution, like the Rubick cube.
I think the card game solitaire is addicting because it is like a game you would use for fortune telling. Make a wish, and if you succeed, your wish will come through. At least that’s how we used to play the card solitaire game.
December 8th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Solitaire is an interesting choice here because I think it’s motivating as a time-filler…something to do when board. I’m not sure whether it’s a game that has much of a learning component. If we look at it from the ARCS model, it definitely keeps player “attention,” but I don’t think the content is very “relevant.” That’s probably why one of our classmates listed a comment above that said he/she plays solitaire on his/her computer to “look like” he/she is doing work. I think the game does build some degree of “confidence.” However, as another commentor noted, the games results are also left up to luck or chance…this can be slightly de-motivating at times, I think. The last motivational factor in ARCS is “satisfaction.” Here again, I think the player will be satisfied when they win, but often they won’t win and have no control over that due to chance… This is an interesting game to think about in the context of learning. Thanks for the post!