Alexey Pajitnov

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Leonidovich and the family name is Pajitnov.

Alexey Pajitnov
Алексей Пажитнов
Pajitnov in 2024
Born	(1955-04-16) April 16, 1955 (age 69) Moscow, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Soviet Union (until 1991) Russia United States
Alma mater	Moscow Aviation Institute
Occupations	Computer engineer video game designer
Employer(s)	Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre The Tetris Company Microsoft
Known for	Creator of Tetris
Awards	First Penguin Award – Game Developers Choice Awards (2006) LARA – Der Deutsche Games Award [de] (2009)

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov^[a] (born April 16, 1955)^[1] is a Soviet (now Russian) computer engineer and video game designer who lives in the United States.^[2] He is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of Sciences).^[3] After Tetris was released internationally in 1987, he released a sequel in 1989, entitled Welltris.

In 1991, he moved to the United States and later became a U.S. citizen.^[2] In 1996, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Despite the game's high popularity, Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, with the Soviet government being the only Russians who had made money from it.^[4]

Early life

Pajitnov was born to Soviet parents, who were both writers, his father was an art critic, his mother was a journalist who wrote for both newspapers and a film magazine. It was through his parents that Pajitnov gained exposure to the arts, eventually developing a passion for cinema. He accompanied his mother to many film screenings, including the Moscow Film Festival.^{[5]: 296 [6]: 75} Pajitnov was also mathematically inclined, enjoying puzzles and problem solving.

In 1967, when he was 11 years old, Pajitnov's parents divorced. For several years, he lived with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment owned by the state. The two were eventually able to move into a private apartment at 49 Gertsen Street, when Pajitnov was 17.^{[5]: 296 [7]} He later went on to study applied mathematics at the Moscow Aviation Institute.^[8][9]

Career

In 1977, Pajitnov worked as a summer intern at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Once he graduated in 1979, he accepted a job there working on speech recognition at the academy's Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre.^[10]: 86 When the Computing Centre received new equipment, its researchers would write a small program for it in order to test its computing capabilities. According to Pajitnov, this "became [his] excuse for making games".^[11] Computer games were fascinating to him because they offered a way to bridge the gap between logic and emotion, and Pajitnov held interests in both mathematics and puzzles, as well as the psychology of computing.^[6]: 76

Searching for inspiration, Pajitnov recalled his childhood memories of playing pentominoes, a game in which the user creates pictures using its shapes. Remembering the difficulty he had in putting the pieces back into their box, Pajitnov felt inspired to create a game based on that concept.^[12][13] Using an Electronika 60 in the Computing Centre, he began working on what would become the first version of Tetris. Building the first prototype in two weeks,^[13] Pajitnov spent longer playtesting and adding to the game, completing it on June 6, 1985.^[14][15] This primitive version did not have levels or a scoring system, but Pajitnov knew he had a potentially great game, since he could not stop playing it at work.^[12][16]

The game attracted the interest of coworkers like fellow programmer Dmitri Pevlovsky, who helped Pajitnov connect with Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old intern at the Soviet Academy. Pajitnov wanted to make a color version of Tetris for the IBM Personal Computer, and enlisted the intern to help. Gerasimov created the PC version in less than three weeks, and with contributions from Pevlovsky, spent an additional month adding new features like scorekeeping and sound effects.^{[5]: 300 [6]: 78} The game, first available in the Soviet Union, received international releases through Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte in 1988.^[17]

Pajitnov created a sequel to Tetris, entitled Welltris, which has the same principle, but in a three-dimensional environment where the player sees the playing area from above.^[18][19][20]

Tetris was licensed and managed by Soviet company ELORG, which had a monopoly on the import and export of computer hardware and software in the Soviet Union,^[21] and advertised with the slogan "From Russia with Love"^{[citation needed]} (on NES: "From Russia with Fun!").^[22][23] Because he was employed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Pajitnov did not receive royalties.

Pajitnov, together with Vladimir Pokhilko, moved to the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 1996 founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers, which, in combination with the rights reverting to him in 1995^[24][25] or 1996,^[26][27] finally allowed him to collect royalties from his game. He helped design the puzzles in the Super NES versions of Yoshi's Cookie and designed the game Pandora's Box, which incorporates more traditional jigsaw-style puzzles. Pajitnov and Pokhilko founded the 3D software technology company AnimaTek, which developed the game / screensaver El-Fish.^[28]

He was employed by Microsoft from October 1996 until 2005. While there, he worked on the Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection, MSN Mind Aerobics and MSN Games groups. Pajitnov's new, enhanced version of Hexic, Hexic HD, was included with every new Xbox 360 Premium package.^[29][30]

In August 2005, WildSnake Software announced that Pajitnov would be collaborating with them to release a new line of puzzle games.^[31]

Personal life

Pajitnov moved to the United States in 1991, was naturalized as a U.S. citizen and now lives in Clyde Hill, Washington.^[2][32] He has a wife, Nina, with whom he had two sons named Peter and Dmitri.^[7][33]

Political views

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Pajitnov issued a statement condemning the war and stating that he was "sure that Putin and his hateful regime will fall down and the normal peaceful way of living will be restored in Ukraine and, hopefully, in Russia".^[34]

Games

Title	Year	Platform(s)	Role(s)
Tetris	1985	Electronika 60, IBM-PC	Original concept (with Vadim Gerasimov & Dmitry Pavlovsky)
Muddle	1989	Electronika 60, IBM-PC	Designer (Published by JV Dialogue)[35]
Welltris	1989	Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh & ZX Spectrum	Designer (with Andrei Sgenov)
Faces	1990	Amiga, DOS, Macintosh	Original concept (with Vladimir Pokhilko)
Hatris	1990	TurboGrafx-16, Arcade, Game Boy & NES	Original concept
Knight Move	1990	Famicom Disk System (Japan)	Idealist
Wordtris	1991	DOS, Game Boy, Classic Mac OS, SNES	Designer
Yoshi's Cookie	1992	NES, Game Boy, SNES	Puzzle Designer
El-Fish	1993	DOS	Original concept (with Vladimir Pokhilko)
Knight Moves	1995	Windows	Idealist
Ice & Fire	1995	Windows, Macintosh	Original concept (with Vladimir Pokhilko)
Tetrisphere	1997	Nintendo 64	Contributor
Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection	1997	Windows & Game Boy Color	Designer
Microsoft Pandora's Box	1999	Windows	Designer
Microsoft A.I. Puzzler	2001	Windows	Designer
Hexic	2003	Windows	Original concept and design
Hexic HD	2005	Xbox 360	Original concept and design
Dwice	2006	Windows	Designer
Hexic 2	2007	Xbox 360	Designer
Marbly	2013	iOS	Original concept and design

Awards and recognition

In 1996, GameSpot named him as the fourth most influential computer game developer of all time.^[36] In March 2007, he received the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award. The award was given for pioneering the casual games market.^[37]

In June 2009, he received the honorary award at the LARA - Der Deutsche Games Award in Cologne, Germany.^[38] In 2012, IGN included Pajitnov on their list of 5 Memorable Video Game Industry One-Hit Wonders, calling him "the ultimate video game one-hit wonder."^[39] In 2015, Pajitnov won the Bizkaia Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.^[40][41]

Pajitnov was portrayed by Russian actor Nikita Yefremov in the 2023 movie Tetris, a dramatised retelling of the licensing bidding war for Tetris in the late 1980s.^[42]

See also

• BreakThru!, video game endorsed by Pajitnov
• ClockWerx, video game endorsed by Pajitnov

Notes

1. Russian: Алексей Леонидович Пажитнов, romanized: Aleksey Leonidovich Pazhitnov, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ ˈpaʐɨtnəf]

References

1. "Corporate Bio". Tetris. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
2. Sapieha, Chad (March 23, 2006). "Tetris' Alexey Pajitnov". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
3. "Tetris | video game | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved April 19, 2023.
4. "Tetris: a history". Atarihq.com. Retrieved May 6, 2012.
5. Sheff, David (1993). Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children (1st ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 9780679404699.
6. Goldberg, Harold (2011). All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 9780307463555.
7. Ackerman, Dan (2016). "Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov". The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610396127.
8. "Alexey Pajitnov, Creator of Tetris". tetris.com. tetris holding. Retrieved August 5, 2018. He received his Master's degree in Applied Mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Aviation
9. "History of Computers and Computing, Birth of the modern computer, Software history, Tetris of Alexey Pajitnov". history-computer.com. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
10. Ichbiah, Daniel (1997). "Tetris: l'infernal casse-tête qui venait du froid" [Tetris: the infernal puzzle that came from the cold]. La saga des jeux vidéo [The saga of video games] (in French) (1st ed.). Pocket. ISBN 9782266087636.
11. Hoad, Phil (June 2, 2014). "Tetris: How We Made the Addictive Computer Game". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 3, 2014. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
12. Romo, Vanessa (June 6, 2019). "Happy Birthday, Tetris. 35 Years Later You're As Addictive And Tetromino-y As Ever". NPR. Archived from the original on June 7, 2019. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
13. "Meet the men who built the only perfect video game: Tetris". Digital Trends. February 12, 2015. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
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15. shmuplations (January 11, 2022). "Tetris – 1993 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com". Retrieved April 19, 2023.
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17. Kent, Steve L. (2001). The ultimate history of video games : from Pong to Pokémon and beyond : the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. Internet Archive. Roseville, Calif. : Prima Pub. ISBN 978-0-7615-3643-7.
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19. "WELLTRIS GAME A SEQUEL THAT'S JUST AS ADDICTIVE AS ORIGINAL". Chicago Tribune. November 17, 1989. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
20. Reid, T.R. (September 9, 1991). "PERESTROIKA, A PROGRAMMER AND A PC CREATE AN ADDICTION TO TETRIS". Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
21. McCluskey, Megan (March 31, 2023). "The True Story Behind Apple TV+'s 'Tetris' Movie". TIME. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
22. Robarge, Drew (November 6, 2014). "Tetris: Fun in the Cold War?". National Museum of American History. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
23. Prisco, Jacopo (November 1, 2019). "Tetris: The Soviet 'mind game' that took over the world". CNN. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
24. Sapieha, Chad (March 23, 2006). "Tetris' Alexey Pajitnov". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
25. Peckham, Matt (June 6, 2014). "Tetris at 30: An Interview with the Historic Puzzle Game's Creator". TIME. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
26. Frost, Caroline (February 12, 2004). "Tetris: A chip off the old bloc". BBC NEWS. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
27. Burton, Jamie (March 29, 2023). "Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov feels Russia is now "hopeless"". Newsweek. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
28. Marc Saltzman, ed. (May 1, 2002). Game Programming 5.0 Starter Kit. Pearson Education. p. 431. ISBN 978-1-57595-555-1. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
29. Gravning, Jagger (March 29, 2018). "The Man Who Made 'Tetris'". Vice Media. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
30. Lee, Benjamin (November 18, 2015). "Brett Ratner slotting together Tetris origins movie". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
31. "WildSnake newsletter 18 August 2005, retrieved 31-10-2007". Wildsnake.com. August 18, 2005. Archived from the original on November 12, 2009. Retrieved November 20, 2009.
32. Cornwell, Paige (July 13, 2023). "Tetris founder — and Eastside resident — reflects on iconic game's legacy". The Seattle Times. Retrieved July 13, 2023.
33. Marriott, Michel (September 16, 1999). "Creator of Tetris Looks for New Ways to Dazzle and Beguile". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
34. "Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov condemns Russian invasion of Ukraine". VentureBeat. March 23, 2022. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
35. "High Stakes Math". Scientific American Frontiers. Season 1. Episode 4. January 9, 1991. PBS. Retrieved July 4, 2023.
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37. "2007 Game Developers Choice Awards To Honor Miyamoto, Pajitnov". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on March 7, 2007. Retrieved February 12, 2007.
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40. "F&S 2015 BIZKAIA AWARD". April 26, 2022.
41. "El inventor del Tetris desvela su exito". Elmundo. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
42. "Apple Original Films unveils trailer for "Tetris" new thriller starring Taron Egerton". Tetris. April 10, 2023. Retrieved April 10, 2023.

External links

• Alexey L. Pajitnov profile at MobyGames
• Tetris Creator Claims Free and Open Source Software Destroys the Market.
• Tetris — From Russia with Love, BBC documentary