- Jan 7, 2002
- 12,755
- 3
- 0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3479989.stm
Fortunes were made and lawsuits fought as Tetris swept the world in the 1980s and killed a million conversations. But 20 years after the creation of this technological phenomenon, its inventor Alexey Pajitnov is only just beginning to make any money.
Back in 1985, in the Cold War Soviet Union, the man responsible for one of the most addictive computer games in history was a jobbing scientist at the Russian Academy of Science. Where his predecessors had monitored Sputniks and calculated Soviet superpower, Pajitnov was able to indulge his love of puzzles and human psychology.
It took him less than a fortnight to write the code for what would become Tetris, although he was delayed by his growing passion for his own invention - what he called "testing the system".
Building blocks
Work stopped, beards grew and ashtrays filled as Pajitnov's colleagues joined in the Zen-like game of creating solid lines out of rapidly descending T-shaped on-screen blocks. Word spread, floppy disks of the game followed and, before long, Moscow had gone Tetris-crazy. The game spread throughout the eastern bloc and only stopped at the Iron Curtain.
Events conspired to make Tetris the success it proved. Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in the Kremlin lowered trade barriers between east and west, and created a new capitalist awareness among Russians.
Game developers in the west like Atari and Nintendo were creating new portable consoles - perfect platforms for the simple design that was Tetris. At the same time, entrepreneurs like Robert Maxwell had noted the huge market potential of electronic entertainment.
All were beating a path to the door of Tetris, which meant getting the signature of one man - Evgeni Belikov at Elorg, the Russian ministry for the export of software. Pajitnov may have invented the game, but in the Soviet era there was no notion of individual copyright - the state owned all ideas.
After much dispute over the various rights to the game, Belikov finally signed the most lucrative licenses to Texan dynamo Henk Rogers, who had been entrusted with securing the rights by Nintendo, which wanted to launch Tetris as part of its new Gameboy package.
Fortunes were made and lawsuits fought as Tetris swept the world in the 1980s and killed a million conversations. But 20 years after the creation of this technological phenomenon, its inventor Alexey Pajitnov is only just beginning to make any money.
Back in 1985, in the Cold War Soviet Union, the man responsible for one of the most addictive computer games in history was a jobbing scientist at the Russian Academy of Science. Where his predecessors had monitored Sputniks and calculated Soviet superpower, Pajitnov was able to indulge his love of puzzles and human psychology.
It took him less than a fortnight to write the code for what would become Tetris, although he was delayed by his growing passion for his own invention - what he called "testing the system".
Building blocks
Work stopped, beards grew and ashtrays filled as Pajitnov's colleagues joined in the Zen-like game of creating solid lines out of rapidly descending T-shaped on-screen blocks. Word spread, floppy disks of the game followed and, before long, Moscow had gone Tetris-crazy. The game spread throughout the eastern bloc and only stopped at the Iron Curtain.
Events conspired to make Tetris the success it proved. Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in the Kremlin lowered trade barriers between east and west, and created a new capitalist awareness among Russians.
Game developers in the west like Atari and Nintendo were creating new portable consoles - perfect platforms for the simple design that was Tetris. At the same time, entrepreneurs like Robert Maxwell had noted the huge market potential of electronic entertainment.
All were beating a path to the door of Tetris, which meant getting the signature of one man - Evgeni Belikov at Elorg, the Russian ministry for the export of software. Pajitnov may have invented the game, but in the Soviet era there was no notion of individual copyright - the state owned all ideas.
After much dispute over the various rights to the game, Belikov finally signed the most lucrative licenses to Texan dynamo Henk Rogers, who had been entrusted with securing the rights by Nintendo, which wanted to launch Tetris as part of its new Gameboy package.
Facebook
Twitter