Author: Dan Ackerman
In the 2016 book, “The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World,” author Dan Ackerman, a radio DJ turned tech journalist, assembles pieces of a fragmented narrative into a neat, fast-paced story.
Each chapter is almost like a tetromino (a single Tetris piece). The story is layered, technical, nerdy and a tiny bit quirky.
Perhaps the most recognizable video game yet made, Tetris has a definitive story all its own. Ackerman, who is an editor at leading technology news website CNET, brought that animation to life.
In the chapter “Bonus Level, Tetris into Infinity,” Ackerman asks: “Is it possible to ‘win’ a game of Tetris? The idea of what constitutes a winning state is an ongoing source of debate among game theorists.”
Ackerman walks us through what the mathematicians say, discussing among other things the limitations of the Z shape in the classic Tetris game.
He asks: “An attentive player with lightning-fast reflexes could easily keep the game going for a very long time, but based on the rules established above, is it possible to continue forever?”
It’s a good question.
If you have been alive during the past four decades, you will have most likely played it yourself or know someone who has. The book deemed it to be “a game so great, even the Cold War couldn’t stop it.”
But how did that come to be? Why?
The book considers a question many have been wondering: How did a quiet, obscure Soviet software engineer create the game on, even at the time, antiquated computers in 1984? And how is it still so popular 40 years later?
Tetris earnings have exceeded $1 billion in sales, the book states, and peppered within its pages, readers will notice additional facts scattered around to make it even more interesting. One such fact states: “Guinness World Records, recognizes Tetris as being the ‘most-ported’ game in history. It appears on more than 65 different platforms.”
Another reads: “The Nintendo World store in New York has on display a Game Boy handheld that was badly burned in a 1990s Gulf War bombing. It is still powered on and playing Tetris.”
That Russian programmer, Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, did not change the world, but he did change how we interact with it, by creating that game. Pajitnov was 28 when he developed Tetris in Moscow. Now 68, he is still a significant figure in the gaming world. While he did not initially receive any royalties due to strict Soviet laws at the time, he later got what was owed to him when he formed The Tetris Company in 1996 to manage the licensing rights for the game.
