The Tetris effect
Subtitle: the game that hypnotized the world
By: Dan Ackerman
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9781610396110
Subjects: Computer games; Programming; History
Description: "Tetris is perhaps the most instantly recognizable, popular video game ever made. Sales of authorized copies total near $1 billion to date, and that is just a fraction of the money made from knockoffs and pirated versions. Based on an obscure board game, it was designed for early computers, became a hit on TV consoles, and soared in popularity with handheld devices like the Game Boy. Today it lives on in smartphones, tablets, and laptops. All this despite the fact--or perhaps because of it--that it has no superhero to merchandise and no story to dramatize. Tetris is abstraction translated to bytes, a puzzle game in its purest form. Yet its origin story is so improbable that it's amazing that any of us ever played the game. In this surprising and entertaining book, tech reporter Dan Ackerman explains how a Soviet programmer named Alexey Pajitnov was struck with inspiration as a teenager, then meticulously worked for years to bring the game he had envisioned to life. Despite the archaic machines (outdated even for their era) that Pajitnov worked with and the fact that he had to develop the game after-hours on his own time, Tetris worked its way first through his office, and then out of it, entrancing player after player with its hypnotic shapes. It became almost a metaphor for the late Soviet era, with the kinetic energy of commerce pushing ever harder against the walls put up by the government. British, American, and Japanese moguls saw the game's potential and worked, often unscrupulously, to beat each other in the race to sell the game. Ackerman tells the story of these men and their maneuvers, and how the game made it to consumers' hands in the United States on a Game Boy screen in 1989"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-249) and index.
Table of contents: title: The great race; title: Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov; title: Coming to America; title: The first blocks; title: The black onyx; title: Going viral; title: Bonus level 1: This is your brain on Tetris; title: From behind the Iron Curtain; title: Into the mirror; title: The Russians are coming; title: "A diabolical plot"; title: Welcome to ELORG; title: Tetris takes Las Vegas; title: Bonus level 2: Tetris into infinity; title: A bulletproof deal; title: A secret plan; title: The gathering storm; title: The big bet; title: Enemies at the gate; title: "Meet at the chicken"; title: A tale of two Tetrises; title: Bonus level 3: the cognitive vaccine; title: Epilogue: The final bricks.