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On the eve of the first OXO Legends Award, we got to sit down in the same room with arguably the two most important figures in puzzle design in history, to talk about the inception of their games and how they became competitive.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is the OXO Video Game Museum in Málaga and this is a beautiful opportunity because I'm here joined by Erno and Alexey who are the creators of probably the best known puzzles of all time, Rubik's Cube and Tetris."
"So you are going to be awarded tomorrow as an OXO Legend.
First question for you.
How do you remember the Eureka moment that you came up with the main concept of Tetris?
Okay, so I have several aha moments during my design of Tetris."
"I do remember them very well.
So basically Tetris was inspired by the game called Pentomino and I tried to make a two-player game out of those set of the Pentomino pieces.
And I need to put, I coded myself and I have no graphic on my computer so in order to put some images on the screen it was quite a challenge."
"So once I do the program who shifts the pieces, places it on the screen, shifted them and rotate them, that was different procedure.
So when I do rotational stuff it was very amazing to look for.
You push the keys and the piece immediately turns."
"It sounds ridiculous now but that time it was kind of exciting moment.
That was my first aha.
I saw it and decided that probably real-time game would be very good with this.
Alright, it was. It really was."
"And the second, the most aha moment was at the point when the game started working with the placement and everything but it fills up the field in no time.
Like 20 seconds and the game is over.
And I think how to extend the game in time."
"One of the option was to scroll it through the screen up and down.
But then players should memorize what's downstairs and I know that people hate it.
So then I looked at it more attentively and see that the field line is kind of dead on the screen."
"It has no purpose there anymore.
So if I take them away I could continue to play the game.
And that was the main aha for game.
At this moment game was done."
"It clicked.
Let me ask you the same question, Erno.
When was and how was your aha, as Alexey said, your aha moment that you realized that you were coming up with a fantastic concept?
I can say it's very hard to say there is one aha."
"There are so many on the way.
So your activities depend on your past probably mostly and your interests and what you are doing and so on and so forth.
It was not my main task."
"It was something, a side effect of my activity, partly teaching, partly design.
My background is in several components.
I studied sculpturing in middle school and I continued learning design in architecture in university and I continued in an art school about design in general and interior design and so on and using furniture design, that kind of things."
"Surprisingly, when I finished my course there, my teacher asked me to stay.
So I never planned to do such a thing, but in general speaking, I can't say I love to go to school every day."
"But probably this design school was one of my most favorite because it was so complex environment.
So there are so many areas of design was represented, was teaching different faculties, graphic design, industrial design, furniture design and interior design and many other things."
"So that's texture and fashion design, many other things.
So I thought, why not? We can try.
And I love to stay in the faculties and the workshops.
My activity is usually composed by my mind and my hands."
"I think our hands are on the same level as important of our mind.
We are using it.
Unfortunately, nowadays, slowly people forget it.
They forget using it, just pushing the button, but it is not the same as writing, for example, the letters and make writings or many other things that has a long culture and so on and so forth."
"But in the meantime, I got some different tasks, not just to lecturing interior design, but for example, in the graphic department, I started a course of three-dimensional way of thinking and using simple materials, but three-dimensional way of thinking."
"So probably in the side effect, I was interested all the time in the past about challenges, which taste in your mind, how to solve it and so on, chess and many other things.
But I thought to find out that kind of challenges would be very useful as part of lecturing, to teach people, to try to help them to discover the beauty of space and structure and so on."
"And the final result was something that partly was very similar, became later on used in computers as well, but I all the time felt it was very important, our hands, to use our hands and to do something with our hands and in that sense, naturally, speaking is very nice, writing is another possibility, but in that sense, there are words about using your hands and to form materials."
"That's probably the most, how can I say, delicate activity of people.
It started very early, a long, long time ago, and it's continued.
And what I made, you know, I loved geometry all the time.
I think geometry is a very pure, elegant, and beautiful knowledge of human beings."
"All the Greeks were very good in this, and they find out, for example, the regular solids, the meaning of that and what they mean, and one of my favorite ones was the cube."
"The cube was a form, and I was thinking, what can I do with it?
And there are several things, and probably that way of thinking, the result was the cube, at first as an experiment, and then when I solved the technical problems, that was the main challenge, because to create this structure, physical structure capable to keep together these elements of the cube, I was cutting the cube in the same dimension, and all together, finally, I got the 3x3x3 section."
"At first I wanted to solve the 2x2 one, but finally I found out the solution lying inside the 3x3.
So the 2x2 is some kind of simplifying the 3x3.
And when it's done, the structure, the challenge was, what can I do with it?
It's nice, it's working, but what else?
And it was my idea to identify the pieces, at first some kind of signs and so on, and I was wondering how many different positions they can have, so the freedom of the movement with a closed structure, which is a very interesting fact, because right now close to everybody knows how many possibilities they have, it's a dream number, so we can't imagine that size of possibilities, quintillions in size, and finally I thought, if I tried to, I had to believe it's solvable, but in nature I didn't know how, and I didn't want to move ahead without knowing what to do with it, and so I was thinking and working on a solution, what to do with it, and it takes time, it's not an easy task, everybody can prove it at any time, it's tied by it."
"Lots of people just give it away because, oh, I can't do it, let's give it up.
Fortunately, kids are not this type, so the kids love to do challenges, and love to do something well, and especially better than the other one, and so they challenge each other, and I think kids created the success of the cube."
"The success is already turned to, we left the 50th anniversary of the cube last year, and that was a very nice event.
Fifty-one now?
It rarely happens if something started with a craze, and that was the fact in the connection with the cube, because in the first three years more than 150 million pieces were sold, but usually after that the sale died, and no continuity, but after a while when the stock was sold out, it started again, slowly going up and down as usual, and interestingly after the turn of the century, a new wave started, because a new generation is coming, crossing the cube, and they organized the competitions, they made an assembly about that, and right now the story is going on."
"Going on for 51, I think, 41, and you mentioned something very interesting, which is challenge and competition, and I wanted to ask you both about the competitive side to the game."
"Did you foresee it could become a competitive phenomenon, like it is today?
I mean, it of course started kind of like a sports game in a way, compared to tennis and the references you mentioned before."
"Could you picture it becoming what it is today competitively, and with the community you guys have behind the game?
Of course it is.
Well, every game has a competitive component, whatever it is."
"So every time when you have a challenge, this challenge means some kind of competition.
Either it's competition against yourself, either it's competition against the author, either it's competition against the other people."
"So I immediately saw very obvious potential of my game, particularly in the world of the games, because besides all the specific traits, it's just a regular game, and people play games to compete."
"Also, I was pretty sure that the second thing which people will do with the cube is to compete with each other, how fast they do or whatever.
As soon as they do their first kind of solution, the second stuff they will do with the cube is start to compete."
"No doubt of it.
Do you think the three-second time record that is right now can be cracked?
It's not available yet.
It's a little bit more than three seconds."
"But when I made it, I was not thinking about competition.
I am not that type of person who would like to be better than other one.
Usually what I like, the next day I can do the same thing a little bit better than yesterday."
"And I compete with myself, and I compete with the challenge.
To beat the challenge itself, that's the biggest victory.
But that's nature of people.
They would like to compare who is the better one and so on, and their progress, and they like to make records."
"And that's very unbearable results.
And interestingly, very young kids can do it.
The world recorder actually is a seven-year-old boy.
It seems to happen to Tetris."
"It's a wonder.
You know, how can I say?
My personal opinion, the most important thing, to beat the challenge, not to beat other people's progress, but to achieve the challenge itself."
"So to know how to find a solution, a problem which is formalized but not solved yet, so there is no answer yet.
And that's my main nature, but I can understand.
Sure, it's a very good element of people, life, and society."
"We are competitors.
We are competing each other.
Nature, sometimes to win, it seems more important than anything else.
But in my view, it's not a fact."
"It's not happened this one.
But for the champions, for them, it's true.
And I remember a very young guy last year at the 40th anniversary being a champion on Tetris as well."
"Okay, I have to cut here.
Just a yes-no question.
Do you play Rubik's Cube?
Yes.
Do you play Tetris?
In the past, yes."
"In the past?
Yeah, I was at the present when it was started.
Exactly.
Interestingly, the age of the computer, it started at the same time when the cube was born, and they were growing up in the parallel thing."
"And it became one of the most important and challenging things.
You know, today AI is coming.
I love science fiction, and I was reading several books about AI in the past when it was only a dream."
"But I was reading books from people who believed that it was coming and so on and so forth.
Nature, it came a little bit later than they suggested, a dream.
And it's usually everything in life, it has several contradictions in AI."
"There is nothing just, you know, if the food is very good, it's fine, but to eat too much, it's dangerous.
All the time there are negative parts of things.
I'm very curious of the direction and what can I do."
"It would be not good if AI will do everything and we are just watching.
And I've seen that AI trying to create a Rubik's Cube is the ultimate challenge for AI right now, for LLMs.
They get it wrong many times, so it's a very interesting thing to take a look at because for AI to create a Rubik's Cube is super difficult."
"Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for your puzzles.
Thank you for 41 years of Tetris.
Thank you for 50 plus years of your cube."
