For years, operating systems on computers and mobiles have come installed with games – or sometimes links to games, where the games themselves are playable from a browser.
A lot of people still have great memories of chasing a high score on several versions of Snake through the years. Some mobiles had Pac-Man instead.
Windows has had Solitaire, Spider Solitaire and FreeCell for years. Hell, Solitaire was such a popular pastime that it got a few people fired for doing it instead of working. It even had Pinball for anyone more inclined.
I think earlier Macintosh computers had Space-Invaders, too.
Snake might have come and gone and today people can install apps on their own devices at the drop of a hat: But a few things haven’t changed.
Operating systems still come with pre-installed stuff, and I think it could be great if more operating systems and web browsers started to incorporate bridge as a default.
“Wait, What?”
To summarize this thought as a movie reference, if you book them, they will come – and if you put an icon on the home screen that takes the browser or operating system straight to the BBO home page, they will certainly play.
Why aren’t a lot of people playing bridge right now? Because there are still thousands of people who don’t know the game exists. And if they’re not led towards some bridge resource that catches their attention in a way that makes them want to play the game, they might never find out about bridge at all.
How?
Let’s say that you’ve just downloaded the newest version of Webby Web Browser. You open it up for a first-time setup – and you see an icon right at the top next to the ones for Google, Instagram and Facebook. “Hey, what’s this BBO thing?”
And there you have someone’s attention.
Someone who might not have known about bridge – or about BBO – before this.
It can work, and it doesn’t have to be complicated.
It doesn’t have to be downloadable, and it doesn’t have to be on the operating systems – it can work just as well in browsers, too.
If you’re a software developer, including a BBO icon that brings a user to the BBO site can do a lot to make more people discover bridge.
Who agrees?