I Play Games, Also Tell You About Jobs I've Slack Off At: Super Radical Solitaire
Far too many years ago I spent a summer working on a farm picking fruit, mostly pears. We were paid by the crate which meant if you made less than minimum wage you were paid minimum for that day and not invited back. Other than that we set our own pace, took breaks when we wanted, took shelter inside crates lying on their sides during showers if we chose, slacked or worked as we felt like. We had the odd bit of fun, perhaps the best being the day the lads in the next row picked a pear that looked uncannily like a penis and testicles*.
This was before I had a mobile phone and I don’t think Super Radical Solitaire works on phones. [UPDATE: It does, here's the link for Android] I can’t recommend taking a tablet out to the farm. Still, if you want to take a rest out there and have a device it’s on you should go for it.
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| You can choose other hideous colour schemes |
Still a long time ago I worked in the back office of an insurance company. Some days I worked hard on problems, figuring out what on earth was up with the raw data and massaging it to end up making some kind of sense to someone. Other times I half-heartedly tinkered with systems trying to make them give back results a bit better. And on yet other days I would attend training that taught me very little, or meetings where nothing was decided**. In any case I drank a lot of tea and coffee, going back and forth to the kitchen, and probably as much water, entailing a walk to the water cooler. And as a result, a fair number of trips to the toilet. Nearly every one of these was delayed by a chat with a colleague.
I had Solitaire on my computer at work but never used it. Too much like my actual work, especially when it went into a dead-end unwinnable state. If I wanted to slack off I could talk to an actual human being, who might even be glad of the disturbance.
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| Yay I won |
I kept a bowl of mints on my desk for visitors because it made them feel welcome. Also so I could eat them.
Super Radical Solitaire doesn’t have a dead-end unwinnable state, or if so I haven’t found it. When stuck – or even if you aren’t and just feel like it – you can Go Rad and enter a mini-game to swap the card for one you can’t access.
For a while I was a teaching assistant at a school. Let me tell you, five hours of face-to-face lessons was harder work than doing eight or nine hours in the office. I couldn’t take a break, I was always on, as much concentration as I could muster. Which sometimes on a Friday afternoon was not as much as I’d hope, but as long as I was one step ahead of the students that was the important thing.
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| I won... another mini-game? |
In computer lessons the students loved to find games to play. Bloons was a great favourite, as a site it was hosted on wasn’t blocked by the school. Solitaire was turned off, I think. Some of the students might have taken the lesson from Solitaire well; sometimes you can’t solve the problem and you have to give up and try something else. Others knew it already and better than I ever well.
Super Radical Solitaire offers a different lesson. It is a hideous tortured 80s hellscape of a game with a distorted robot voice that names the cards as they appear, the mini-games when you Go Rad and will even make an attempt at your name. (It’s a synth voice that reads the words, like the voice synth on my Amiga these many years ago except less human.)
There was a recent article about bosses worried about employees working from home stealing time. Well I don’t know about that***. I’ve been out of work, trying to scrape together some spending money by writing ridiculous stories and drawing monsters. Still, I’m aware of friends who have rushed through their work in the morning so as to be able to take on childcare duties from their spouse in the afternoon and let them do their work then. As though without the distraction of an office they’re able to keep their output at acceptable levels, even while having more to do and an extremely stressful global pandemic is going on and they’re cut off from their support systems, companionship outside the home and other pursuits. And maybe, even if you actually own the company and aren’t simply a middle manager (which is just another employee so far as capitalism knows or cares), you shouldn’t try to squeeze every last working drop from people. Even under normal circumstances.
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| Fishing, a classic time-wasting activity |
Super Radical Solitaire doesn’t have any more answers than I do. It offers you an ugly looking game of solitaire, for free if you promise to play at work (it will accept your word that’s what you’re doing). And then when you get stuck you can Go Rad and it will offer you a different game at random. Mine Finder, Pachinko, Bubble, Claw, Shkpang. Another attempt. Another chance to change one card to get out of the hole you’re stuck in.
Another way to waste time, but also a way forward by changing the nature of the game. And the more times you win the more mini-games you get. And because you’re playing the mini-games to change cards, you’re looking to win until you get a card you can use and then lose to get back. So all those mini-games are re-contextualised.
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| SPOILERS: You catch playing cards |
Look, either you like the metaphor or you don’t. Solitaire is frustrating and stupid and people played it because the alternative would be doing accounts or writing letters on their computer. Work. Super Radical Solitaire is not frustrating, and is even more stupid. It sounds terrifying, it’s not in any way useful and it doesn’t pretend to be.
What it is, is an alternative way of slacking off, and maybe even an alternative way of thinking about things that we take for granted, including games that have been hanging about since the 80s.
Is that really radical? Maybe it is, under the circumstances. Maybe it is.
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| Oh god what is this what is this? |
Don’t Play This: It’s ugly in sound and colour, and none of the games have much to them.
Full Disclosure: I was part of the beta-test for Radical Solitaire, of which Super Radical Solitaire is the Deluxe Game Of The Year Ultimate version.
* My brother once picked a peach that was shaped uncannily like a vulva; sadly for heterosexual fruit romance fans this was in New Zealand in a different year so it is unlikely they ever met.** So here are my meeting tips: 1. A meeting is not the place where decisions get made. It happens either before the decision takes place so that everyone gets to give their opinion and feel part of it, or it takes place afterwards so that everyone is informed of what has been decided and gets to define their part of it. Understanding this will make meetings less frustrating. 2. If you have to run a meeting, run it like a tabletop roleplaying session.
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| Oh yeah, break through to the 6 of clubs |
*** In fact I DO know about that and have OPINIONS. In brief, if you weren’t measuring your employees time before they worked from home, you were judging them on their output. If their output is up to scratch then no problem. And if it isn’t, have you noticed there’s a global pandemic, everyone is under stress and having to pick up responsibilities they don’t normally do? Let’s get through this and then figure out what’s what. Try treating each other with respect and compassion, and you know what, maybe keep doing that after the vaccines roll out and the disease is less all-consuming.
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