I've spent far too much time playing Tetris and related games. Why is such a simple game so addictive that as an undergrad, I'd give my roommate my disc to hide (yes, that's how we played in the early 90s) during finals so I wouldn't get distracted. Dan Ackerman doesn't explain Tetris's appeal (there probably isn't an explanation), but he tells the parallel stories of Soviet Alexey Pajitnov and Dutch-American Henk Rogers, the programmers who created and marketed the program. Pajitnov became fascinated with math games and pentaminos when he was a teenager recovering from knee and ankle injuries and a few years later, using the outdated computers in his Iron Curtain workplace, turned that interest into an addictive computer game. Rogers first encountered computers as a high school student in New York City and, through several detours, ended up as a game publisher in Japan. When he came across Tetris, no one expected him to be the person to bring legal copies to the West but through a combination of charm, tenacity, and inroads into the Russian Go playing community, he brokered a deal between Pajitnov's bosses and Nintendo. The rest is history - Tetris conquered the world, Pajitnov was able to take credit (and royalties) once the Iron Curtain fell, and Rogers ran the Tetris licensing company until he retired and his daughter took over.
While the details are interesting, the basic story is pretty much as I expected, with one exception. Researchers are looking at Tetris as a way to fight PTSD. The theory is that if someone who has been exposed to trauma can play Tetris for an hour or so during the critical 24-48 hour memory formation period, it may blunt the severity of the damage. After years of joking that Tetris is good for teaching how to load a dishwasher or fill a freezer, it turns out that it may have a vital role in society.
