Tetris is a phenomenon. Created in 1984 by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov, it was initially passed hand to hand by floppy disk. Soon it was crossing national borders and generations like no game before or since. Sales and downloads are now in the hundreds of millions, and the first film of a sci-fi trilogy based on its ever-descending blocks is due in 2018.
The story behind its creation – a tale of idealism, legal wrangling, murder and vast profits starring amateur game designers, Soviet bureaucrats, Japanese and American electronics companies and Robert Maxwell – is compelling. Brown chronicles Tetris’s spread and the software giants’ desperate dance around the rights for various markets, and ponders humanity’s need for games. The result is a decent introduction to a fascinating moment in cultural history, touching on Nintendo’s backstory and the 1980s revolutions that made gaming one of the world’s biggest creative industries. But the artwork is forgettable and the characters are flat, leaving the book feeling – in contrast to the game – all too putdownable.
