If Tetris were a song, it would be Happy Birthday — at least according to The Tetris Company co-founder Henk Rogers.
“All the other games are going to go out of fashion and Tetris is still going to be here,” Rogers tells IGN. “People ask me if it was a song, what song would it be? And I would say it would be Happy Birthday. Because everybody still sings Happy Birthday. Everything else goes in and out of style, but Happy Birthday continues on and everybody sings it.”
Rogers and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov recently saw themselves adapted into Hollywood through Apple TV+’s Tetris movie, which tells a dramatized version of Rogers trying to work with Pajitnov to bring Tetris to the masses.
It’s a story that dates back over thirty years, but Tetris still remains relevant today through beloved modernizations like Tetris Effect and Tetris DS. In an interview with IGN, Pajitnov and Rogers each took a moment to look ahead to the future of the iconic block-falling puzzle game.
“I will say as an advocate of the game itself, I really expect — in terms of esport[s] and other stuff — I really expect the very good version of versus Tetris, two player or multiplayer Tetris will appear in the future because frankly, I don’t feel we are there yet,” Pajitnov says. “Tetris is a very resource-consuming game. You drive all your attention, all your possibility to play into the game. So you literally have no possibility to see what’s going on on your opponent’s screens and stuff.
“Basically all the two-player versions of Tetris fall apart into two solitaire games, which people just rarely exchange by the scoring or some kind of very episodic impacts or whatever. It’s not a real two-player game. I really expect something to be done in design of [a] real two-player game. That’s my big hope. The other hope that artificial intelligence will come to the scene. In which kind of role, or how, I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure it’ll get there.”
Using Tetris in the Medical Field
Rogers isn’t as keen on AI playing a role in Tetris’ future, telling IGN, “I don’t know what AI can do to improve” the game. Rogers agreed that esports is the “bigger picture” for Tetris, but he also has his own ideas for the classic game moving forward.
“There’s a couple of places where I think Tetris is very relevant,” Rogers says. “One is they did a study back in the early 2000s at Oxford about PTSD. So I think Tetris has a life as a medical device, not only for the prevention of PTSD, but also for monitoring brain function. I think that as we get better at understanding brain function, we should be able to tell what’s going on in somebody’s mind by watching them play Tetris. It’s a very simple device to see.”
Rogers says those with Alzheimer’s disease and people recovering from strokes are groups that could potentially benefit from a Tetris medical device.
Tetris has been through highs and lows over the past few decades — Pajitnov calls the N64’s Tetrisphere “embarrassing” while Rogers says he told Nintendo “there was no way this game was going to be popular” — but the pair’s ideas make it clear that they believe Tetris will always have a place in the gaming landscape.
Elsewhere in our interview, Pajitnov and Rogers talk about the accuracy of the events shown in the Tetris movie.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.