Via NEXT generation:
on a dreary and deserted Sunday morning: it seems a strange time and place to be meeting one of the most revered figures in game design history. But the café is snug, and Alexey Pajitnov, with his clipped beard, neat trainers and buttoned-up polo shirt, seems more like a favorite physics teacher than a genius, or a star.
Pajitnov is in Nottingham to appear at the GameCity festival, and to promote nothing in particular. Later in the day he’ll attend a screening of Tetris: From Russia With Love, the 2004 BBC documentary focusing on his creation of the universally popular puzzle game while at the academic Moscow Computer Centre, and the tortuous wrangling over it between communist Russia and the corporate west. He’ll sit through it all, reminding himself of events, chuckling to see his friends on the screen, and wincing at his adorably thick Russian accent (seemingly undiluted by more than a decade living in Seattle).
If Tetris was ever a part of your life, you’re going to enjoy the rest of this interview. click above to read more.
Great article! I especially liked this quote:
“In the 17th or 18th centuries, the puzzle was associated with a walk to a secret door, a mystery. I think that this mystic element really is there, because when you solve the puzzle it looks so easy, so obvious, and you can’t understand why you didn’t see it immediately. It means you were charmed.”
The psychology of game playing is a fascinating field, too. Universally acclaimed titles like Tetris and the PopCap series of games reach in to us and scratch some kind of mental itch. It’s partially the entrancing effect of repetitive behavior coupled with a subtle reward system, but I think they also give us satisfaction in exercising our faculty of spatial logic/reasoning in a clean, pure way, over and over…like the pleasant burn of a good physical workout.
Also:
“But, you know, you don’t need to be really smart to create really hard puzzles - it’s not correlated. You need to be really good to create easy puzzles!”
I think this is true for many things, from puzzles to design and even business strategies. It’s much easier to throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks, than to do something with simple elegance which hits the target the first time.
And Japanese human Tetris is just the best thing ever.
Played Tetris on video game console, computer and mobile phone.
This human tetris is funny. I shared with my wife and daughters and we all had several good laughs. Go to youtube for more, just search human tetris or japanprobe.