The Tetris Effect Book Review | The Game that Hypnotized the World

Written by Dan Ackerman, The “Tetris Effect” The Early days of Tetris, tells the story of the creation and evolution of the worldwide phenomenon known as Tetris, a tile-matching puzzle video game. It delves deeply into the legal and logistical nightmare of doing business behind the Iron Curtain, before the days of Glasnost and Perestroika near the tail end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Tetris was the first video game exported from Russia.

I always knew Tetris was a great game and a great concept, but until I read this book I had really forgotten just how big and popular a game it is. The first few chapters cover how in 1984, the Russian Game designer, Alexy Pajitnov, game up with the concept and later the first implementation of the game on a Soviet-Era Electronika 60 computer system. The book explained back then in Russia, even the most advanced computer systems available at the time were at least 10 years behind what the west was using, making this an even more remarkable achievement. According to Alexy the name Tetris is derived from a combination of his favorite game, Tennis, and the Greek term “Tetra” which means 4 pieces, hence Tetris. Tetris was one of the early games that only used about one-third of the computer screens real estate, using the outer edges of the screen as background images and for scoring.

The book is arranged into three parts each concluding with a bonus level chapter. Each chapter contains a small Tetris Trivia excerpt, which really helps to keep the reader engaged. For example, in Chapter one they state “Tetris was the first video game played in space”.

The book also documents a couple of people connected to Tetris from the licensing point of view, mainly Henk Rogers.

Henk Rogers started out as a developer, creating the first turn-based role-playing game in Japan, a game called the Black Onyx in 1984. After creating the game, he turned his attention to distributing and marketing the game, gaining him valuable experience. Once he learned about Tetris, he knew he had to at least try to secure the rights to sell it. He would eventually succeed in doing so, but not without much competition and many years of trying.

The thing about Tetris was not only was the concept really simple, but the game itself is extremely engaging and addictive. The book explains that just about any time somebody saw the game, they instantly became enamored with it. Many people would play the game for hours upon hours straight. So much so that even when not playing the game, all they would see were blocks moving around. Later coined the “Tetris Effect”, hence the name of the book. On page 78,

The concept of the Tetris Effect was said to be introduced in the May 1994 Wired Magazine Article titled “This is your brain on Tetris”. “Modern version of this kind of persistent visuospatial memory effect… ”

The chapter titled “The Cognitive Vaccine” details recent studies that were done documenting how the video game Tetris can be used to combat severe PTSD symptoms. How it works they explained, it sort of changes how and where those memories are stored in the brain. There was a study in 2014 that said “playing Tetris reduces cravings in smokers and drinkers by about 24 percent”. I would have never thought that. So now I have some solid advice on how to help someone quit smoking or drinking, “Play Tetris!”.

Tetris would later be ported to just about every computer system imaginable, from the Gameboy to the mobile phone, from gaming consoles, arcades, tablets, to the PC market. You name it, just about every computer system out there has some version of Tetris running on it.

Speaking of the game boy here is a quote from Henk Rogers:

Tetris made Game Boy and Game Boy made Tetris. It was the perfect platform for the game since you could carry it around. That’s how it caught on. And it’s even bigger on mobiles. From <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jun/02/how-we-made-tetris>

In fact according to Wikipedia,
Guinness World Records has recognized Tetris as being the most ported in the history of video gaming, appearing on in excess of 65 different platforms by 2011.

Electronic Gaming Monthly’s 100th issue had Tetris in the first place as “Greatest Game of All Time”

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris>

In 2010 it was announced that Tetris had sold over 100 million copies for cell phones making it the
best-selling paid-downloaded game of all time.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris>

The book states that to date, authorized copies of Tetris have brought in over $1 Billion dollars worldwide. This is not even counting the unauthorized versions and pirated copies. The sad part to me is that at least in the beginning Alexy Pajitnov lost the rights to sell his own program, his invention. It wasn’t for many years later after the rules were relaxed in Russia, that he was able to get even a small piece of the pie. It’s a fascinating story. It tells a sort of complex tale of corporate licensing deals. I never knew how complicated video game licensing could be. You can sell the rights to distribute on the PC to one entity and then sell the rights to distribute to a different platform to another entity, and they could sub sell some of their parts of the pie to yet other entities and so on. And all of that could just pertain to the rights in one region like say Japan. I would say that a little more than 50% of the book covers the minute details of these licensing deals. It was actually quite interesting.

There are many variants of Tetris. They tweak things like the pace of play, how the game calculates the score, and a ton of variations changing the background images and music for example. One of my favorite variations is a homebrew for the Atari 2600 called Chetiry, a game I hope to do a review of at some point in the future. What stood out to me about this variant was the sound effects produced on the Atari 2600 and if my memory serves me correctly, I believe this game saves your high scores on the cartridge.

Tetris made an appearance in the 2015 movie Pixels, and there is a feature film being developed based on the game, set to be filmed in 2017 in China.

There is even a food company, US Foods, that sells Tetris style shaped potatoes, labeled as Monarch Puzzle Potatoes. Lets check out the commercial here. I had never seen these before. There are all kinds of Tetris based products for sale on the open market. Products such as Lamps, Alarm Clocks, Coffee mugs, pillows, and even lunch pails.

The book is available as a digital download on Amazon.com, Google Playbooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo for $15.99. The physical hardcover copy of the book can be had for right around $20. The author’s website shows it also available at http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781610396110

There’s a great interview with the books author Dan Ackerman on TWIT TV’s Triangulation, which I will provide a link to in this video description. So overall this was a fascinating story, a quick read, and I highly recommend you check it out.

Youtube Description:

This is my review of Dan Ackerman’s book “The Tetris Effect – The Game that Hypnotized the World”.

Dan Ackerman Website:
http://www.danackerman.com/

http://tetris.com/

Early Version of tetris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gAgQQHFcQ

The Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jun/02/how-we-made-tetris

Tetris Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris

Wired May 1994 “Tetris Effect” article:
https://www.wired.com/1994/05/tetris-2/

Interview with Dan Ackerman on Triangulation (TWIT.TV):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfNaq8IvFTg

US Foods Tator video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdwFSHda1GU

Dan Ackermans purchase website:
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781610396110

Chetiry on Atariage:
https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1003