The game that changed the world
AS George Orwell expected, 1984 was a big year for techno-dystopianism. Apple ran that advert with the hammers. Mark Zuckerberg was born, condemning us to a lifetime of likes and ex-stalking. William Gibson published Neuromancer , bringing the concept of cyberspace to the masses.
Perhaps most chillingly of all, however, it was the year that the video game Tetris appeared, conceived by a Russian computer scientist called Alexey Pajitnov, the ultimate blockhead.
It is a puzzle in which computergenerated chance determines the order in which the blocks fall. There are six types of block, so, with a few moves, a near-infinite range of possibilities emerges.
Enough Tetris changes the way you look at the world. Skylines and books become blocks; holes become gaps.
What is unusual about Tetris , in a world of ever improving iterations of similar games, is that it arrived perfectly formed. Pong was the antecedent of incredible complicated sports games. Call of Duty is better at being Doom than Doom ever was. Tetris was perfect on landing.
Plenty of new games, particularly those designed for smartphones and tablets, aim at this kind of high-minded simplicity. Angry Birds and Candy Crush are the best examples — simple concepts that hammer on your brain’s reward centres like a drunk on a pub cubicle. The most you can say about the new games is that they are “like Tetris ”.
Had Tetris been shown in a modern art gallery rather than on consoles and arcades, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece of form and function. It can only be played electronically, but beyond that, it does not depend on processing power.
Better graphics do not improve the experience. Its core ideas are almost philosophical in their simplicity: when things fit together too easily, they disappear. And you always lose eventually. —