The Sacrifice of Innocents

How many innocent smiling faces must be sacrificed in our desperate attempts at greatness? How many smileys will end up frowny, with x’s for eyes as we blindly strive to compete and conquer? How many will be killed within the first few seconds of utter ignorance, blind, wild guessation, sporadic flailings on the battlefield, more often then not losing immediately, guessing wrong and exploding a little fictional innocent in vain, only to start again, to kill again? How many?! And how many times will we save that same smiley face only to find that our time was unsatisfactory and our name and numbers will not be saved in the Minesweeper Hall of Fame? Who are we to decide their fates?