Product Fun Facts - Tetris
Product Profile
Name: Tetris
Manufacturer: Elektronorgtechnica
Category: Electronic puzzle game
Launched: 6 June 1984
Lifespan: ~35 years (still in production)
Units Sold: > 500 million
Fun Facts
The Name Tetris Means Block Tennis
The name Tetris is combination of the Greek word tetra, which refers to the four squares contained in each type of falling block in the game, and the word tennis.1
Born in a Russian Research Facility
The original creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, came up with the idea while working at the Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded research and development organisation.2
Created to Make a Serious Job Fun
Alexey's job involved testing a new type of computer, the Electronika 60. To do so, he wrote a simple game based on a child's puzzle to help evaluate the processing capability of the new computer. In reality, Alexey was simply make a serious but somewhat tedious job a bit more fun.3
Too Dangerous to Sell Initially
Alexey joined with colleagues, Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov to further develop the game and port it to different platforms. They also dreamed about selling the game, but this was somewhat unusual and difficult in the communist Soviet Union, where making and selling something privately was a dangerous affair. In 1980's Soviet Russia, the state owned all the rights.2
Simple Ingredients to Success
The three key ingredients of Tetris were 'simple', 'challenging' and 'fun' and these were enough to hook anyone. “The program wasn’t complicated,” Pajitnov has said. “There was no scoring, no levels. But I started playing and I couldn’t stop.”4
Spread Like Wildfire
Since it couldn't be sold on any commercial market, Tetris' founders simply started giving it away to friends and colleagues to enjoy. People started sharing Tetris through word of mouth and by copying it onto floppy disks. The rate at which this happened was amazing. "It was like a wood fire. Everyone in the Soviet Union who had a PC had Tetris on it," said Pajitnov.3 Before long, Tetris had jumped borders and people were playing in North America and Europe.5
The State Steps In
Given the obvious potential for sales and the early unlicensed nature of Tetris, business-minded folks around the world started scrambling to make a profit from it. Following an approach by one such businessman to license Tetris, Alexey went back to his superiors with the proposal. This resulted in the Soviet state organization that oversaw software and hardware exports, Electronorgtechnica, getting involved.3
The Killer Licensing Agreement
Despite various businesses competing for rights to distribute Tetris, there was one clear winner. In 1988, Nintendo struck a deal that would change gaming history forever. Nintendo secured the rights for the game to be bundled with their new hand-held console, the Game Boy. This decision led the handheld platform to become the most popular portable game system of its time, and in the process, sell more than 35 million copies.6
Exponential Growth
Following its success with Nintendo, Tetris had cemented itself into the minds and hearts of people all over world. Since then, the game has gone on to sell over 500 million copies across numerous platforms7. Simply staggering! An amazing result for a product with such simple foundations!
Bonus Weird Facts
Credit to Mindy Weisberger for this batch of weird and wonderful footnotes about Tetris 8
It Causes Hallucinations
Have you ever heard of the "Tetris Effect"? This happens when you play a game, staring at the screen, for such a long period of time that images show up when you close your eyes. This effects is also known as gaming-induced pseudo-hallucinations, or game transfer phenomena (GTP). It has been analysed in a 2014 study published in the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction.9
That Tune is Actually a Love long
The theme song to Tetris is an ear-worm. If you played the game enough over the years, I bet you can recall the tune right now. Turns out, it is based on a 19th centry Russian folk song called "Korobeiniki". It tells the story of the courtship between a peasant girl and a peddler.
Playing Tetris Makes Your Brain Thick
According to a 2009 study published in the journal BMC Research Notes, playing Tetris thickens the brain's cortex and can contribute to greater cognitive efficiency.10
Tetris is a Modern Work of Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has included Tetris in their collection of video games they consider to be outstanding examples of interaction design. Tetris was selected for its visual quality, aesthetic experience, elegance of the code and design of the player’s behaviour.11
It Was the First Game In Space
Cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov took his Nintendo Game Boy along with a Tetris cartridge along for the ride on a Soyuz TM-17 to the Mir space station in 1993. Serebrov entertained himself with Tetris in between spacewalks and experiments during his 196 day mission.12
References
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tetris
[2] https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Software/Tetris.html
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/tetris-video-game-history/index.html
[5]: https://tetris.com/history-of-tetris
[6]: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tetris-history-2014-6
[7]: https://au.ign.com/articles/2019/04/19/top-10-best-selling-video-games-of-all-time
[8]: https://www.livescience.com/56473-7-weird-facts-about-tetris.html
[9]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10447318.2013.839900
[10]: https://doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-2-174
[11]: https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/11/29/video-games-14-in-the-collection-for-starters/
[12]: https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19144/lot/250/