Interview: Alexei Pajitnov, creator of Tetris

by Kevin Kelly { Jun 10th 2009 at 7:00AM }

Alexey Pajitnov (right) with Dutch games publisher Henk Rogers, who helped place the game on every Game Boy.

With Project Natal, Uncharted 2, Metroid: Other M, Scribblenauts, and everything else going on at E3, the 25th anniversary of Tetris almost went unnoticed this past week, which is a real shame. We met up with Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of the game, and sat down with him to mark the occasion. Tetris may very well be the "remember when?" dividing line among video game generations, and it was quite an honor to meet the man behind the game that's become one of the cornerstones of the industry.

You can listen to the full audio of the interview below, and head beyond the break for probably the world's shortest documentary, entitled "The Tetris Effect." Seriously, it's only three minutes long. How you can sum up the impact of a game that's still fun to play and appears on every major and minor platform around is beyond us. Maybe one of you readers will feel inspired to do an in-depth Ken Burns style documentary on it someday.

He's one of the sweetest people we've met in the industry, and despite having invented one of the most prolific games in the world, he's very humble and down to earth. Give it a listen and try to imagine a world without Tetris.

Gallery: Tetris at 25

Tags: Alexey-Pajitnov, e3-2009, interview, Tetris

Related From Joystiq

Hideo Kojima wants a new Zone of the Enders
25 days ago
PAX 2008: The Penny Arcade Interview
433 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Spartan @ Jun 10th 2009 7:08AM

Tetris is awesome.

But didn't he sell the rights to it?

Ethan @ Jun 10th 2009 7:45AM

He sold it to the (Russian) government. How it ended up with The tetris company I don't know.

derdaim @ Jun 10th 2009 7:49AM

"Unfortunately, because of the communistic ideology I couldn't benefit from it at that time"

He never had the rights because it belongs to mother Russia ^^

THE WICKER MAN (BWF) (GT: Dalek Prime) @ Jun 10th 2009 12:04PM

In my country, we invent Tetris. One game later, and we want our freedom!

Duke @ Jun 10th 2009 12:48PM

My understanding was that the Russian gov screwed him on the whole thing. This is a guy that deserves to get a lot of money for his game and bad politics got in the way.

cuteSAVAGE @ Jun 10th 2009 3:36PM

He actually developed the game while working on projects funded by the Soviet Union. He was employed by the government, and anything he did there would have been government property. It's like creating something for a school project. Whatever you make (especially graded material) is at least partial property of the university.

He does deserve a hell of a lot more recognition for his work though.

Temidien @ Jun 10th 2009 8:06AM

Still the best 2D game ever. Downvote me all you want, you know Tetris has consumed more hours of your life than all physical activity combined.

DWells55 @ Jun 10th 2009 10:05AM

Tris on the iPhone has claimed so much of my time. I have all these fancy 3D apps with great gameplay on there, but I usually just find myself playing Tris. Shame it got pulled from the App Store due to the BS claim EA made. If your company's $5 game can't beat the gameplay of a free one, just bully a young indie dev out of competition. Classy.

zombienutz @ Jun 10th 2009 8:22AM

Thanks for the interview, Kevin. Well done. All this Tetris talk encouraged me to dig out my original GameBoy and Tetris cartridge.

Puntos @ Jun 10th 2009 8:27AM

Was never a Tetris fan, but respect what it did for gaming, those guys are legends.

Would have been since for more history, like the sorry business with Atari and other companies (many brought the rights from someone who didn't have them, only Nintendo went to the Russian government and got the actual rights and lots of suing involved).

And LOL @ "it's addicting" x3... "it's addictIVE" really funny hearing that three times in a row