Team play was considered, but accessibility will be the real key to "the new stage of Tetris"

At the weekend we had the pleasure and the privilege to sit down with the creators of Tetris and Rubik's Cube firstly to talk puzzle design and revelations, and then with Tetris' own Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers to talk all things "the perfect game".

In the exclusive Gamereactor interview below, Pajitnov first analyses how new generations of players relate to Tetris and gaming in general, and then both the creator (Mr. Tetris) and the chairman (Dr. Tetris) discuss new ways to play and engage with that community, including potential upcoming changes to the core mechanics, competitive or not.

Lazier, uncommitted new generations

"So, basically, now I feel that the new stage of Tetris life starts", its creator announces in the video, "because the generation changed, and the people's attitude to the game changed, and the general attitude of people changed. The player become less patient, less responsible, absolutely unable to read any manuals or instructions (laughs), and so on. Phones are controlled by just a finger, and that gives specifics to the dynamic of gameplay. So, lots of technical and social issues with the game, and we need to update, to refresh the version all the time. And I'm old enough, and nobody listens to me, so... (laughs)"

"
Poor baby, nobody listens to you!" - jokes Rogers. "
I really rely on the team who helped me to maintain the brand and to keep the game alive", Pajitnov appreciates finally.

"Computer games is a very complicated kind of social phenomenon, with the technical kind of problem and advantages with the social stuff"

The driver and the navigator, 2v2 competitive Tetris Team Play?

"Well, I worked on this idea a long time ago", Pajitnov confirms to Gamereactor. "And nobody really appreciated it, because it's really hard to literally organize this stuff. It's not very complicated to understand, but it's hard to organize all this."

"To make versus Tetris to work in a team", he continues, "with the different asymmetric roles of several players, so that one player kind of is a driver, who really plays Tetris on the field, and the other one is navigator, who can kind of navigate your Tetris game through the opponent and give them harm or support alliance, do the organizational stuff. Both function at one player, it's too much, because Tetris is a very, very big, mind-consuming game. The experience of Tetris 99 one more time convinced me that that's the right way, that's the way to do it, because the best Tetris 99 games are the guys who are able to shoot the very right opponents on the field."

What the game needs to become to the Tetris Olympics

Finally, Rogers elaborates on what would give way to Tetris Olympics, a modern take on the game with a more understandable spectator mode and replays, just like a TV sport:

"Yeah, so there are several versions of Tetris out there which can show people what can be done at a very high level. I mean, the ARIKA Grand Master [Tetris TGM], when you watch the video, it's like, are you kidding me? How can a human do that? It even goes to the point where you can't see the pieces, which, by the way, is very interesting, but it's not a spectator sport. So for a spectator sport, you have to be able to see everything all the time and understand what's going on".

"In order to make Tetris a little bit easier over time, we've added some things that, in fact, make Tetris easier. For example, the hold piece, or, for example, the bag system, which is where we, instead of giving you completely random pieces, we take seven pieces, we shuffle them, give them to you, and then we shuffle them again and give them again. So every 13th is guaranteed to be an 'I' piece. So it kind of takes the tension away a little bit. I like to get rid of that as well".

"Certainly single, double, triple Tetris has become part of the game, that should stay. The T-spin has become [a staple] and the combos. But here's the way the rotation works, just quickly. If you have a Z or an S piece and you take it to one side, in the Game Boy, on one side it'll turn, but on the other side it won't. And so when people push the button expecting something to happen, something should happen. And so basically what super rotation does is when people expect something to happen, it happens. And that makes the game a little bit more easy, but it also enables the game to be played much faster."

How would you tweak Tetris so that it evolves to the perfect esport? More on Tetris' past and future, and on the stories of both legends, in the full video below, which is fully subtitled to your local language: