The Story of Tetris
Sometimes games are more than just games. At the height of the Cold War in 1984, a jigsaw enthusiast named Alexey Pajitnov created a new video game that continues to entertain hundreds of thousands of people around the world today. Millions of gamers are happy. With the United States and the Soviet Union locked in a battle of wills with potentially disastrous global consequences, Pajitnov’s invention transcended the line of resistance and became a worldwide sensation. The story of Tetris charts this intricate journey against the backdrop of a turbulent world history.
During this time, the idea of producing and selling your own inventions can be a difficult and dangerous endeavor. But that was Pajitnov’s early goal. After graduating from the Moscow Aviation Institute in applied mathematics, he worked at the Dorodnitsyn State Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences. R&D facilities are technologically far behind the Western world. But with the help of several collaborators, Pajitnov was still able to produce the first prototype of Tetris. Initially, the game’s instantly addictive nature only attracted gamers in Moscow, but it soon spread to millions of people living beyond the borders of the Soviet Union.
The story of how the game was later recognized and spread in the West and other parts of the world is multi-faceted. Torn between following government rules and wanting his invention to succeed, Pajitnov had to choose a delicate course of action. For his efforts, he was deprived of a portion of the game’s profits, a disadvantage that was not remedied until years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film tells with great affection and admiration every detail of the process, including the intricacies of the game’s creation, the many connections around the world that brought the game under its umbrella, and the way Tetris became an international phenomenon.
The story of Tetris is an infectious and riveting portrait of a dreamer whose enthusiasm cannot be quelled by the constraints of conflicting world powers.
