Worth Books - Summary and Analysis of The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World: Based on the Book by Dan Ackerman

Summary and Analysis of

The Tetris Effect

The Game that Hypnotized the World

Based on the Book by Dan Ackerman

Contents

Context

Tetris might be a timeless video game, but it certainly isnt new: the first version was programmed more than thirty years ago. Since then, hundreds of millions of people have probably played Tetris at least once, and many more have fallen prey to its addictive qualities. What players might be unfamiliar with are the unlikely circumstances in which Tetris was developed and shared, and the intense legal battle that ensued over the rights to the popular gameacross devices and global territories.

The surprising story begins in Soviet Russia, where computer researcher Alexey Pajitnov programmed the first version of Tetris on his clunky Electronica 60 PC. The United States today finds itself obliquely threatened by Russian espionage, but, in 1984, the Soviet republics were truly closed off from the Western world, without even the most primitive Internet access.

Against the odds, Tetris escaped to Hungary, where a sketchy software licenser picked it up and started selling rights to the game long before he got any approval from Electronorgtechnica (ELORG), the USSRs official technology distributor. With new digital startups turning into global enterprises faster than ever, the history of the game stands as a cautionary tale that encompasses creativity and innovation, culture and politics, business strategy and negotiation, as well as end users and emerging research into neuroplasticity.

Technology journalist Dan Ackerman provides an informative, intriguing account of the history of one of the worlds most popular video games in his book The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World .

Overview

If youve ever touched a computer, youre probably familiar with Tetris. But have you ever considered the origins of the deceptively simple puzzle game?

The games story begins in the USSR, when Alexey Pajitnov took a job at the Russian Academy of Sciences computer center. The technology he had looked forward to using wasnt even at his fingertips in 1980, when the center was still using a wall-sized mainframe computer from the 1960s, but within a few years he had his own Electronica 60 PC. Pajitnov began working after-hours on his own experiments in programming, trying to create a computer version of one of his favorite puzzle games, pentominoesa popular game in Russia where players solved puzzles with geometric shapes made up of five connected squares.

Through trial-and-error, he arrived at the first version of Tetris. Teenaged computer wizard Vadim Gerasimov translated the games code to an IBM-compatible version, and it was off: Floppy disks that contained the games code began circulating among Russians with computer access, and citizens became addicted.

Stuck behind the Iron Curtain, it was unclear at first whether Tetris would have a global audience, or even get any attention at all outside the USSR. It was a stroke of good luck that Pajitnovs boss sent the game to Hungary, where software licenser Robert Stein often sought out cheap foreign talent to bring back to the United Kingdom. Stein sold the first Tetris rights to Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte right awaytoo quickly, as it turned out, seeing as it would take him more than a year to have a signed contract with Russias technology distribution office, ELORG.

Tetris was a fast international hit, and as its popularity exploded, the various licensing deals Stein was selling spun out of his control.

Summary

Part I

1. The Great Race

Five years after Tetris was first programmed by a computer scientist in the Soviet Union, it escaped the confines of the Iron Curtain and achieved unpredicted international popularity. It was clear that there was money to be made from the geometry-based video game, but it was uncertain to whom it should be paid.

In February of 1989, three men from the Western world each set out to make a deal in Moscow: Henk Rogers, Kevin Maxwell, and Robert Stein would ultimately meet with Electronorgtechnica (ELORG), the Soviet office responsible for licensing software and technology. Alexey Pajitnov, Tetriss creator, would have no official say in the decision or profit from the outcomeas a Russian citizen, his intellectual property was owned by the state.

Henk Rogers, an American programmer who had been living in Japan and working for Nintendo, was at a distinct disadvantage in the race to acquire game rights: he had entered the USSR on a sketchy tourist visa, and, unlike his two competitors, he had not been invited to ELORGhe didnt even know where its office was. By meeting up with a group players of the strategy game Go, he found a guide who pointed him in the direction of the Ministry of Trade offices.

Need to Know: By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was on the decline. Many of its citizens were poor and frustrated, and the communist government was struggling to maintain its ideological control while attempting to increase foreign revenue. Tetris, with its international cult following, was a rare opportunity for the USSR to enter the international technological trade and potentially reap large profits in the process.

2. Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov

Alexey Pajitnov turned over the rights to Tetris to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), where he first began working in the early 1980s. The math whiz joined RAS because he wanted to to have access to state-of-the art computer technology. The first computer he actually got to use there was an outdated mainframe that employees had to stand in line for in order to access its punch card interface.

After a few years of diligent work, Pajitnov was rewarded with an Electronica 60a chunky Soviet desktop computer that was still behind the times, but afforded him the private access and programming ability to create his famous game.

Pajitnov was neither a political rebel nor a computer prodigy, but a combination of cultural resistance and scientific fascination propelled him toward computers. Pajitnovs mother, a writer whose work focused on cinema, took him to the annual Moscow International Film Festival to see whatever foreign films the USSR censors would allow on their screens. One of Alexeys favorite characters was James Bond, not just for his action-filled exploits, but for his gadgets.

Alexey, born in 1956, had watched the excitement of the Space Race as he grew up, and felt the Soviet push for schoolchildren to become scientists and engineers. At age 15, he took a fateful fall that led to a broken ankle and several months of bed rest. To pass the time during this period of convalenscence, he spent hours solving math puzzles and playing with pentominoes a setthe analog precursor to the game he would later invent.

Need to Know: Pentomino sets, popular among Soviet youth during Alexey Pajitnovs childhood, are made up of twelve blocks constructed of five square cells (one more than tetrominoes, the falling tiles in Tetris). Typically made from wood or plastic, the blocks present the challenge of finding different ways to fit them inside a box without gaps or overlap.

3. Coming to America

At age 11, Henk Rogers moved from his birthplace in Amsterdam to Queens, New York, where he became fluent in English within a year by immersing himself in American cartoons on TV. As a teenager, he attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, one of the few public schools to have its own mainframe computer in the 1960s. The same type of punch card computer system that Pajitnov used in the early 1980s frustrated Rogers with its slow trial-and-error process, which was compounded by having to wait his turn. He cleverly sneaked more of his punch cards into the rotation so he could fix his programming errors more quickly than anyone else.