Alexey Pajitnov
Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born 16 April 1955) is a Russian-American video game designer and computer engineer. He is best known for creating and designing "Tetris" in 1984 while working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded R&D center. He only started to get royalties from his creation in 1996 when he and Henk Rogers formed The Tetris Company. Early life and education. Pajitnov was born to parents who were both writers; his father was a critic of the arts, and his mother was a journalist who wrote for both  newspapers and a film magazine. It was through his parents that Pajitnov gained exposure to the arts, eventually developing a passion for cinema. He accompanied his mother to many film screenings, including the Moscow Film Festival. Pajitnov was also mathematically inclined, enjoying puzzles and problem solving. In 1967, when he was 11 years old, Pajitnov's parents divorced. For several years, he lived with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment owned by the state. The two were eventually able to move into a private apartment at 49 Gersten Street, when Pajitnov was 17. He later went on to study  applied mathematics at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Career. In 1977, Pajitnov worked as a summer intern at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Once he graduated in 1979, he accepted a job there working on speech recognition at the Academy's Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre. When the Computing Centre received new equipment, its researchers would write a small program for it in order to test its computing capabilities. According to Pajitnov, this "became [his] excuse for making games". Computer games were fascinating to him because they offered a way to bridge the gap between logic and emotion, and Pajitnov held interests in  both mathematics and puzzles, as well as the psychology of computing. Searching for inspiration, Pajitnov recalled his childhood memories of playing pentominoes, a game where you create pictures using its shapes. Remembering the difficulty he had in putting the pieces back into their box, Pajitnov felt inspired to create a game based on that concept. Using an Electronika 60 in the Computing Centre, he began working on what would become the first version of "Tetris". Building the first prototype in two weeks, Pajitnov spent longer playtesting and adding to the game, finally completing it on June 6, 1984. This primitive  version did not have levels nor a scoring system, but Pajitnov knew he had a potentially great game, since he couldn't stop playing it at work. The game attracted the interest of coworkers like fellow programmer Dmitri Pevlovsky, who helped Pajitnov connect with Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old intern at the Soviet Academy. Pajitnov wanted to make a color version of "Tetris" for the IBM Personal Computer, and enlisted the intern to help. Gerasimov created the PC version in less than three weeks, and with contributions from Pevlovsky, spent an additional month adding new features like scorekeeping and  sound effects. The game, first available in the Soviet Union, appeared in the West in 1986. Pajitnov also created a sequel to "Tetris", entitled "Welltris", which has the same principle, but in a three-dimensional environment where the player sees the playing area from above. "Tetris" was licensed and managed by Soviet company ELORG, which had a monopoly on the import and export of computer hardware and software in the Soviet Union, and advertised with the slogan ""From Russia with Love"" (on NES: ""From Russia with Fun!""). Because he was employed by the Soviet government, Pajitnov did not receive royalties . Pajitnov, together with Vladimir Pokhilko, moved to the United States in 1991 and later, in 1996, founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers, which finally allowed him to collect royalties from his game. He helped design the puzzles in the Super NES versions of "Yoshi's Cookie" and designed the game "Pandora's Box", which incorporates more traditional jigsaw-style puzzles. Pajitnov and Pokhilko founded the 3D software technology company AnimaTek, which developed the game / screensaver El-Fish. He was employed by Microsoft from October 1996 until 2005. While there, he worked on the "", MSN Mind Aerobics and MSN Games  groups. Pajitnov's new, enhanced version of "Hexic", "Hexic HD", was included with every new Xbox 360 Premium package. On 18 August 2005, WildSnake Software announced that Pajitnov would be collaborating with them to release a new line of puzzle games. Personal life. Pajitnov resides in Clyde Hill, Washington. He has a wife, Nina, and two sons named Peter and Dmitri. Dmitri died in a skiing accident on Mount Rainier in 2017. Awards and recognition. In 1996, GameSpot named him as the fourth most influential computer game developer of all time. On 7 March 2007, he received the Game Developers  Choice Awards First Penguin Award. The award was given for pioneering the casual games market. On 24 June 2009, he received the honorary award at the LARA - Der Deutsche Games Award in Cologne, Germany. In 2012, IGN included Pajitnov on their list of 5 Memorable Video Game Industry One-Hit Wonders, calling him "the ultimate video game one-hit wonder." On 2015, Pajitnov won the Bizkaia Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.