Tetris: The Games People Play

This graphic novel title was a little deceiving. Yes, it talks about the game Tetris, but it covers a lot more. The story goes way back to the beginning of mankind to try and determine where and how the desire for gaming began and how it developed. It moves on to Japan and the history of Nintendo founded by Fusjiro Yamauchi. It began with a popular card game and grew into the technology giant we know today. About 2/3 of the way into the book we meet up with Alexey. We follow his process as he developed Tetris. It was originally distributed around Russia as Freeware, but when it was sent to a company in Hungary, it escaped to the world. The business behind the distribution of the game was daunting to Alexey and everyone was trying to show more make money. This section of the book is quite drawn out, but interesting to see the hoops, the many different companies involved and the politics behind this. Eventually Alexey moved to the US and got a job at Microsoft designing games. Tetris was the first game to go into space. A very interesting read.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. show less

As the title says, this graphic novel is about Tetris, but it's also about Nintendo and (to a lesser extent) Atari/Tengen.

This graphic novel's art style wasn't to my taste at all, but I picked this up more for its subject matter than how it looked. I've read a few video game history books and therefore knew a little Tetris history before going in. It was also one of the games I played a lot on my family's NES growing up. This book included a good deal more information than I'd previously known.

While this was an interesting read, I really wish the flow hadn't been so choppy. It started off with a brief mention of some sort of ancient Egyptian game, and then there was so much about Nintendo that this, at times, felt at least as much like show more a history of Nintendo as a history of Tetris.

It didn't help that the legal and political history of Tetris was a genuinely tangled nightmare. I had trouble keeping track of all the people and companies involved, and what everyone's motivations were and what they'd been promised.

Nothing about the general tone of the graphic novel prepared me for the moment when it was revealed that Vladimir Pokhilko, a friend of Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov who was involved in the development and marketing of the game, committed murder-suicide, killing his wife and their son. We literally went from a page with grinning men (Henk Rogers and Alexey) to body bags.

Anyway, this was occasionally unfocused and confusing, but still a decent read overall.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I really wanted to like this. I'm a huge Tetris fan, and was already pretty familiar with the Tetris origin story. I'm also a huge graphic novel fan, and was primed to enjoy the combination of the two. In fact, I lay down and read the book in an hour or two the night I got it, and immediately rated it 5-stars on Goodreads, even though I knew at the time I had some reservations. But I didn't write a review. I didn't think about it deeply enough to articulate those reservations to myself.

I had a chance to re-read it this morning, and realized immediately what was wrong. Two things: 1. the story is barely about Tetris. It is some parts about Tetris, in the middle mostly, but it has a beginning that makes all kinds of statements about games show more and the origins of games that is written in a very declarative style. These statements are written as if they are fact: some about the origins of senet (one of the first board games); some about which came first, art or games; and some hasty conclusions about the motivations of people as they play games. I would go so far as to say that all of these statements, written as if they are absolute truths, written as if they are well-researched facts, are entirely subjective at best and downright incorrect at worst.

Much later, after what I consider the best parts of the book in the middle, about the actual origination of Tetris, the book becomes primarily about the IP rights battle(s) that plagued Tetris for years. Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting stories in there, but I feel like they're so much less interesting than the origin of games and why we play games, ideas that the book begins with, makes poorly drawn conclusions about, and then abandons.

The entire book is written as if there is nothing subjective about it. These are depictions of facts. History. And after those first 30 pages about ancient history... pages with lots of statements I found suspect, I found it hard to read all the rest without a hefty suspicion. My skeptical hackles were up. The seeds of doubt had taken root. It's entirely possible the rest of the book is well researched, but I wish the book hadn't started as it did.

The second thing I disliked about the book was far more subjective. I loved the art style. The drawings in the book are awesome. But they are not, with a few pages of exceptions, at all inspired by Tetris.

Now maybe this is weird, but I'm a Tetris connoisseur. I've played every Tetris variant I can get my hands on. I've got ALL of the Tetris board games. I've got a collection of Tetris tee-shirts. So... I like Tetris art. And I really expected to find a bunch of it in this book. Overall, I was pretty disappointed. For the most part, pentominos are really only found on pages that depict the actual game itself. The cover is an exception, it is not what we find inside. show less

I'm on the fence about how much I liked this graphic novel. While it does provide a lot of information about the legal battles between electronic gaming giants like Atari and Nintendo over the game, I was hoping it would dig a little deeper into the psychology and the cultural phenomenon that is the game Tetris. It touched on the idea of gaming, but only gives you the tiniest taste of game theory before whisking you off and dumping you deep, deep into the well of rights battles. Also, I would really have loved to know more about Alexey's experiences since he is painted as kind of a happy-go-lucky, law abiding Soviet citizen, but then there is a hint of him having some animosity toward the state for taking all the money for the game near show more the end of the book. Ultimately, I think the book should have been titled _Tetris: Corporate Assholes vs. Soviet Bureaucracy_. show less

I’m not usually a fan of non-fiction, but this graphic novel that tells the story of how the video game Tetris became a sensation across the globe was fascinating!

Stuck between a 2/2.5 and a 3 because I enjoyed a lot of aspects of it, particularly the beginning and end which spoke more to what draws people to games and gaming in a psychological and philosophical sense. By contrast the middle section felt like a largely unbroken series of nearly identical businessmen sitting in board rooms, getting on and off planes, and arguing about contracts and the legal rights to Tetris. I get that this is actually what happened in terms of plot, but it also feels like all there is to take in visually as well. I found the graphic style pretty engaging for the most part, but I wish the bookend commentary on games and the battles over the distribution rights to Tetris were more connected thematically.

Had no idea there was such a story behind this ubiquitous game. The story is extremely effectively told.