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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: You know what that means. The vault door hangs open,

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Speaker 1: the void is within, Will you walk in? Well, of

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Speaker 1: course we're going to walk into the void. The question

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Speaker 1: is what are we gonna find this week? Well, this

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Speaker 1: week we're going to revisit an episode from Tuesday, December one,

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Speaker 1: So this is a couple of years old. Now, this

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Speaker 1: is the first part of a two part episode. So

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Speaker 1: the first part is gonna rerun today and then the

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Speaker 1: next part is going to rerun next Saturday. So if

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Speaker 1: you want to hear part two of this older episode,

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Speaker 1: you can go back in the catalog and and and

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Speaker 1: get the old episode, or you can just wait till

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Speaker 1: next Saturday and we'll put it back up for you.

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Speaker 1: But this episode is called Tetris Syndrome, A Mind Made

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Speaker 1: of Blocks. It's fun that this episode came out around

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Speaker 1: Christmas time because I realized every Christmas I think back

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Speaker 1: to Tetris because it was a game that I received

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Speaker 1: as a Christmas gift and it had that wonderful chip

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Speaker 1: tune version of the dance of the sugar plum Ferry. Dude,

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Speaker 1: we talk about this in the episode. Don't spoil everything, Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm just throwing it out there. If it's the perfect

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Speaker 1: post Christmas listen as well well, even if you are

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Speaker 1: not interested in puzzle games or video games or anything

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Speaker 1: like that. I think this was actually a really interesting topic.

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Speaker 1: We had a lot of fun exploring it, so we

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Speaker 1: hope you enjoy the Tetras Syndrome episode. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, you,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Before we get going here,

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Speaker 1: I just want to shot up quick reminder to everybody.

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Speaker 1: Go on over to stuff of All your Mind dot

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Speaker 1: com if you want to learn more about the show,

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Speaker 1: You want to find old episodes, you want to explore

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Speaker 1: our blog content, our video content, or links out the

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Speaker 1: various social media accounts of just Facebook, Twitter, and tumbling.

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Speaker 1: And also, hey, if you listen to us through items

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Speaker 1: through the Apple system, what did you head on over there?

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Speaker 1: Give us a little love on the review there. It'll

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Speaker 1: help out the algorithm for our show and it's a

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Speaker 1: good way to give back and ensure that we get

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Speaker 1: to keep putting out this kind of content for you.

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Speaker 1: So this episode today is going to be about Tetris,

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Speaker 1: and it's going to be part one of a two

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Speaker 1: part series that we're doing on the science of Tetris,

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Speaker 1: the ancient mystery puzzle of the universe. Yeah, so the

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Speaker 1: first life is a mostly dealing with the power of

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Speaker 1: Tetris and the history of Tetris. Second part is going

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Speaker 1: to dive into some possible uses for that power and knowledge. So, Robert,

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Speaker 1: I have a perhaps pretty weird question for you. All Right,

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Speaker 1: hit me with a pretty weird question. If there were

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Speaker 1: no thinking beings in the universe, would numbers exist? Oh,

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Speaker 1: this is a great question. Yea, Our numbers a human

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Speaker 1: discovery or human or are numbers of human invention? Right?

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Speaker 1: Like the number seven? Is that an inherent feature of

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Speaker 1: the universe or is that just sort of like an

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Speaker 1: idea we've come up with to describe what happens when

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Speaker 1: there are seven of something. I tend to see it

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Speaker 1: as kind of a mix of the two. Like, yes,

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Speaker 1: there is there is an inherent number sense to the universe,

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Speaker 1: but obviously there's a there's a human ordering system layered

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Speaker 1: on top of that so that we can interact with

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Speaker 1: it and understand it. Yeah, I think that's a sensible

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Speaker 1: way of looking at it. But there are certainly people

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Speaker 1: who I think would be called Platonists in this sense

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Speaker 1: that they're Platonic in the sense that they believe in

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Speaker 1: the real existence of abstract objects that are inherent to

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Speaker 1: the universe, like numbers, mathematical objects, the theorems that those

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Speaker 1: things actually do exist as objects in some sense, even

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Speaker 1: though they don't have physical matter in any way. And

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Speaker 1: I sort of feel the same way the Platonists feel

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Speaker 1: about numbers. I feel that way about Tetris. So tell

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Speaker 1: me your personal Tetris history. Well, I think it is.

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Speaker 1: I deal that this episode is publishing during December because

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Speaker 1: for me, there's always something kind of Christmas e about

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Speaker 1: Tetris because I got it back in the day on

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Speaker 1: old school Nintendo. I think I got it for Christmas,

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Speaker 1: so it arrived in the Christmas season, and some of

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Speaker 1: the wonderful music um that was on that game included

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Speaker 1: UM I believe danced with the sugar plumb ferries from

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Speaker 1: the Nutcracker, which of course is a Christmas themed ballet.

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Speaker 1: Ballet that I had to set through or or got

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Speaker 1: to sit through. However you want to look at it

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Speaker 1: many many times, as I had two sisters who were

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Speaker 1: both involved in dance. Oh, it wasn't one of those

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Speaker 1: things where your school took you to the Nutcracker every year. No,

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Speaker 1: I had to, I think, go every year to see

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Speaker 1: one of my two sisters performing it. And it and

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Speaker 1: the Nutcracker is an interesting thing to have to sit

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Speaker 1: through because the first is totally front loaded. The first

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Speaker 1: half has a rat king, it has battles, it has

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Speaker 1: a fabulous candy Land discovery, weird uncles with an eye patch,

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Speaker 1: and then the second half is just just a slumber fest,

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Speaker 1: various dances that are performed for the victors like they've

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Speaker 1: already won. It's just all complete. Afterthought, that's interesting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does have a lot of great hallucinatory imagery. I

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Speaker 1: recalled though. I remember that there's a lady with a

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Speaker 1: huge dress and a bunch of creatures come out from

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Speaker 1: under her dresses. Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, the dance of

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Speaker 1: the sugar Plum Ferry was on the any S version.

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Speaker 1: I played the game Boy version, and I also associate

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Speaker 1: this with Christmas. I think maybe because I associate most

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Speaker 1: video games I played as a child with Christmas, because

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Speaker 1: you know, Christmas is when you get the game and

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Speaker 1: then you have that huge allotment of time and to

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Speaker 1: vote to the game. You can just completely mild your

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Speaker 1: brain to this game play at nine hours a day

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Speaker 1: because there's no school and your you know, your parents

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Speaker 1: don't want to deal with you during Uh So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I totally had that. I had a couple other

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Speaker 1: games for the Game Boy two back in the early

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Speaker 1: nineties when I was a kid. I had Tetris, but

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Speaker 1: also had Super Mario Land. I don't know if you

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Speaker 1: played that on the game Boy. It involves weird it

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Speaker 1: kind of like ancient Egyptian themes that are it wasn't

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Speaker 1: like I played that one. It's sort of unique Mario game.

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Speaker 1: And then I also had a video game called Altered Space,

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Speaker 1: which involved isometric movements that was very hard to control,

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Speaker 1: uh and mostly you would just fall on spikes and

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Speaker 1: run out of air and die. You played a little

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Speaker 1: astronaut who has limited care. Because that was initially imagining

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Speaker 1: some sort of Timothy Leary tamed game. Oh no, that

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Speaker 1: would have been wonderful, like as a kid, I had

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Speaker 1: the game version of the William Hurt movie where he

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Speaker 1: takes ayahuasca and gets in the sensory deprivation tank. You

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Speaker 1: know another thing about about having it, I wonder if

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Speaker 1: this is the case with you as well. I had

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Speaker 1: some horrible Nintendo games on myf like I had Mission Impossible,

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Speaker 1: which was an impossibly difficult game, and then a few

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Speaker 1: other games that really had limited appeal even to me.

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Speaker 1: But Tetris was a game that I played like crazy.

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Speaker 1: My sister, I am sister who was old enough to

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Speaker 1: play the other played like crazy, and even my my

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Speaker 1: dad got in on the act and was playing Tetris

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Speaker 1: and it just ensnared all to all of us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it does have this very universal appeal, which has been

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Speaker 1: chalked up to several different factors from people we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about later in this episode. But the reason I

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Speaker 1: mentioned those other games I had on the game Boy

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Speaker 1: was going back to this very first thing I said,

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Speaker 1: which is that I sensed, even as a child, that

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Speaker 1: there was something very very different between Tetris and these

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Speaker 1: other games, even popular games like you know, the Mario game.

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Speaker 1: I mean, like it didn't have to be a bad game.

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Speaker 1: Other games to me, felt like human artifacts. They felt

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Speaker 1: invented in the sense that you know that that a

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Speaker 1: wheelbarrow is invented. Tetris to me felt like a fundamental,

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Speaker 1: inherent aspect of the universe that was an ancient, secret mystery,

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Speaker 1: and it just seemed to me impossible to believe there

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Speaker 1: was ever a time when there wasn't Tetris woven into

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Speaker 1: the fabric of physics and mathematics. So you're you're basically

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Speaker 1: imagining a scenario where the the Hominids in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and one of Space Odyssey are looking up instead of

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Speaker 1: seeing a complete um monolith, they're seeing the long bar

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Speaker 1: of seeing the Tetris shapes fall and form the monolith. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's got to be the long bar, because that's

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Speaker 1: the most coveted piece among avid Tetris players as long

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Speaker 1: as you've prepared yourself for it's insertion. Yeah, exactly, how

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Speaker 1: true that is. No, I see what I see what

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Speaker 1: you're saying. Exactly this, Uh, it feels perfectly natural, like

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Speaker 1: playing Tetris is like coming home on some level. Um.

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Speaker 1: I definitely remember playing it and being obsessed with it,

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Speaker 1: and and it was just startled to realize this was

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Speaker 1: a new thing in the world. I couldn't believe. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is a game that was invented in nineteen eighty four,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't feel that way. I even even old

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Speaker 1: old games like go and checkers and chess, I mean,

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Speaker 1: these old board games still felt like artifacts. They still

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Speaker 1: felt invented by humans in a way that Tetris didn't.

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Speaker 1: Tetris felt like an ancient mystery. And I'm still not

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Speaker 1: quite sure exactly why that is. But I think throughout

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Speaker 1: these couple of episodes we're gonna do on the science

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Speaker 1: of Tetris, we we may have some leads about why

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Speaker 1: it feels that way to me at least, and I

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Speaker 1: think to to some other people too, Or simply the case,

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Speaker 1: it could just be the case that God itself is

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Speaker 1: the long bar or or some sort of multidimensional um

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Speaker 1: shape that we can't quite understand, but that fits into

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Speaker 1: all possible Tetris scenarios. But indeed, as we explore here,

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Speaker 1: we're also gonna get into some of the recreational mathematical

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Speaker 1: roots of Tetris, and even those don't go back tremendously

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Speaker 1: far that they only go back into the early twentieth century. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: I insist there is an ancient mystery at the secret

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Speaker 1: of this journey, and maybe by the end will unlock it.

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Speaker 1: But I think we should actually look at the game

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Speaker 1: Tetris now, it's history and where it comes from. And

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Speaker 1: the first thing I've got to start with is uh,

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Speaker 1: sort of incidental to the game of Tetris itself. But

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Speaker 1: did you know that the famous Tetris music, that theme

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Speaker 1: right there is based on a Russian folk song that

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Speaker 1: actually has lyrics. I do not know the Tetris theme

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Speaker 1: with lyrics. I love it so much I looked it up.

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Speaker 1: This is the Wikipedia translation, so this may not be

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Speaker 1: the most accurate. But but the first verses, oh my

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Speaker 1: crate is so full, I've got chintz and brocade take pity,

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Speaker 1: Oh sweetie, of this lad's shoulder nice seems kind of

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Speaker 1: appropriate for the game where you're you're stacking the blocks

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Speaker 1: drever my great, it overflows. That is a revelation for me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but surely Tetris didn't just appear out of thin air.

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Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it grew out of some kind of

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Speaker 1: puzzle tradition. Yes, yes, and so I mean certainly you

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Speaker 1: can if you want to to take the roots of

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Speaker 1: tetris and extend them back just completely geometrically. Yes, you

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Speaker 1: can get back into the history of geometry itself, but

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Speaker 1: for the most part, we can begin the birth of

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Speaker 1: tetris with something that was called a pin tomino. This

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Speaker 1: is an arrangement of five unit squares or cubes, all

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Speaker 1: joined along their edges. Um they're twelve free pin tominoes.

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Speaker 1: They're shaped roughly like the letters VT, W, x, U,

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Speaker 1: z F, P I, N y L. That's funny. I

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Speaker 1: looked up some of these designations of like the letter

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Speaker 1: to the pintomeno, and some of them makes sense, Like

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Speaker 1: the W pintomeno looks like a W, the Y pin

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Speaker 1: tom you know, looks like a long bar with a

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Speaker 1: lump on the side. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them are

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Speaker 1: a little a little more abstract. They're eighteen one sided

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Speaker 1: pentomenos in sixty three fixed pintomenos. Okay, So essentially, though,

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Speaker 1: the pentomeno is if you take some squares and you

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Speaker 1: line them up so that the sides are touching in

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Speaker 1: one way or another, how many different shapes can you

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Speaker 1: make out of five squares? And that's what it is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then you you had pintomeno puzzles that were all

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Speaker 1: about arranging them together into a shape, usually something that

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Speaker 1: you know, a rectangle, something fairly simple. Now, the first

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Speaker 1: published pentomeno puzzle of this nature, even though it was

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Speaker 1: not named as such, appeared in Henry Dadeny's The Canterbury

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Speaker 1: Puzzles in nineteen o seven. That a companion to the

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Speaker 1: Canterbury Tales. Um, if anything, it would be the section

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Speaker 1: in the back with a crossroad puzzles too, I guess

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Speaker 1: um no. This is basically a puzzle publication. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in this particular one that Dandenny put together, you had

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Speaker 1: fit twelve pentomino shapes together with one square traumino. And

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Speaker 1: I'll explain the terminology here in a minute. That's four

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Speaker 1: squares as you know encounter in tetris later on. You

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Speaker 1: have to join these together on an eight by eight checkerboard. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So you've got like a puzzle space. That's the board,

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Speaker 1: and the problem is you've got all these pieces that

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Speaker 1: you've got to fit into the space so that they're

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Speaker 1: not you know, poking out the sides or something right.

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Speaker 1: And like any good game, um, there's a there's part

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Speaker 1: of it is the mechanics, which I've described, but the

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Speaker 1: other part was the fluff. And the fluff here was

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Speaker 1: that William the Conqueror had, out of rage, broken a

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Speaker 1: chess up board, and you had to have to reassemble

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Speaker 1: the chessboard. That these each of these shapes is a

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Speaker 1: piece of the shattered board. O the story behind the game. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I kind of love that when there's a game that's

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Speaker 1: not like an adventure action game with characters, but it's

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Speaker 1: a puzzle game, and yet it has a backstory. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I think that's essential. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: play a game that's just pure abstract mathematics and mechanics.

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Speaker 1: I want some cool off in there. That's how I

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Speaker 1: get engaged with. Of course, the exception would be Tetris exactly, yes,

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Speaker 1: because there is well we'll discuss some that have some

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Speaker 1: fluff added on, and sometimes the fluff is delightful, but

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Speaker 1: for the most part, Tetris is the exception to the rule. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but so William the Conqueror gets a chessboard, smashes it

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Speaker 1: into a bunch of pentominoes, and you've got to fit

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Speaker 1: them back together, right though of course they're not called

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Speaker 1: pentominoes at the time. It's not until nine three that

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Speaker 1: American professor Solomon W. Golam actually coins the term. So

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Speaker 1: what he did is he took the word domino, which,

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Speaker 1: of course we know is a little a little block

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Speaker 1: that you line up a play dominoes, whether you do

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Speaker 1: cascading domino, the guy who makes the pizza, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: that that sort of domino. So he took the word domino,

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Speaker 1: and then he and it. He treated it kind of

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Speaker 1: whimsically as if it was die domino, as if omino

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Speaker 1: were a shape, and die referred to the number of

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Speaker 1: squares cubes making it up, because there are two squares

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Speaker 1: in a domino exactly, So he said, what if there

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Speaker 1: were other omino's, So in this case, a pent domino

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Speaker 1: is penta or five plus domino. Likewise, we already mentioned tetromino,

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Speaker 1: which would be tetra for plus domino, right, um and uh.

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Speaker 1: And he also threw out just a general polyominos, a

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Speaker 1: term for these various constructions depending on how many different

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Speaker 1: square cute elements are making them up. So there could

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Speaker 1: be like sex dominoes or sept dominoes exactly, though I

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Speaker 1: imagine as you go higher and higher up the list

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Speaker 1: of cardinal numbers. There, the number of possible shapes just explodes, right,

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Speaker 1: because as you add more squares to move around in

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Speaker 1: different positions, you could probably make an ultimately infinite number

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Speaker 1: of shapes. Yeah, Like, I mean, the bigger ones are

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Speaker 1: going to resemble full blown levels from video games or

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Speaker 1: or dungeoning adventures from Dungeons and Dragons with each of

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Speaker 1: the cubes, right. Um. Now, all of this comes to

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Speaker 1: a head publicly with his nine article Checkerboards and Polyominos

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Speaker 1: in Ameri Ken Mathematical Monthly. And this this really came out.

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Speaker 1: This kick started a lot of interest in these shapes

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Speaker 1: and the kind of puzzles you could have with them.

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Speaker 1: So Pentomino puzzles good stuff, big business. Yeah, well, I

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Speaker 1: mean its big business is you're gonna have in recreational

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Speaker 1: mathematics in the mid twentieth century. But but it's certainly

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Speaker 1: we're not talking about Marl Borrows here, right, But it's

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Speaker 1: still it's catching on. It's it already has an addictive

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Speaker 1: property to it. And then in night it actually launches

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Speaker 1: off the pin and paper off the table and into

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Speaker 1: the world world of computers. Because at this point, we

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Speaker 1: end up with a computer program that generates solutions for

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Speaker 1: an eight by eight polyomino puzzle. So we're all already obsolete. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're already getting the human element out of it, and

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Speaker 1: we're already seeing it take off into the world of

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Speaker 1: computer programming in a very early stage. So I imagine

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Speaker 1: if you're just trying to cram pieces together into a checkerboard,

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Speaker 1: and you've got a fixed number of pieces and a

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Speaker 1: fixed board size, there are a limited number of solutions,

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Speaker 1: right Yeah. According to the University of Victoria Department of

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Speaker 1: Computer Sciences, it's now known that there are two thousand,

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Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty nine solutions for the six by

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Speaker 1: ten rectangle, a thousand and ten solutions for the five

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Speaker 1: by twelve rectangle, three hundred and sixty eight solutions for

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Speaker 1: the four by fifteen rectangle, and two solutions for the

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Speaker 1: three by twenty rectangle. So so yeah, this is you

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Speaker 1: see this, this idea, this new um type of shape

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Speaker 1: puzzle just taking off in the world of recreational mathematics. Uh,

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Speaker 1: finding a warrant warm home there, and that's the sort

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Speaker 1: of sort of soil from which this maddening tetris vine

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Speaker 1: emerges and you can. The interesting thing here is you

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Speaker 1: can even factor in some uh, some interesting non Tetris

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Speaker 1: stuff here. For instance, John Horton Conway's seventy Game of

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Speaker 1: Life cellular automaton simulation. Is that. Oh um. I think

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Speaker 1: we may have mentioned it on here in some past episodes,

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Speaker 1: and we should probably discover it in more depth later on.

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Speaker 1: But it's essentially a very simple, uh, geometric based simulation.

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Speaker 1: Many of you may have seen images from this where

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Speaker 1: it basically looks like crazy little Tetris shapes moving around

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Speaker 1: and changing form on a screen, sort of one of

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Speaker 1: those uh cell evolution simulators along those lines. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: big one really um and uh yeah, it's a fascinating

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Speaker 1: topic on to its own, so we may have to

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Speaker 1: come back on on that one at a later date. Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: you have laid the soil out of which you, as

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Speaker 1: you say, the vines of Tetris grow. But I think

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Speaker 1: we should turn to the vines themselves, because what fascinating

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Speaker 1: vines they are, a lot of people might not have

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Speaker 1: guessed this, so some people probably already know the story. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The creation of Tetris, strangely enough, takes place in a

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties Soviet computing lab in Moscow with a slightly

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Speaker 1: board artificial intelligence researcher discovering the ancient secret of Tetris

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Speaker 1: under the ruse of testing computer hardware capabilities um SO.

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Speaker 1: The the creator of Tetris is named Alexei Petknov, and

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Speaker 1: he was a computer programmer and artificial intelligence researcher working

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Speaker 1: for the Academy of Science of the u S sr SO,

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union Zone Academy of Science. And he was

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Speaker 1: working in a lab that would occasionally be sent a

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Speaker 1: new piece of computer hardware, and in this case, in

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Speaker 1: the case of Tetris, they were sent this thing called

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Speaker 1: the Electronica sixty. It sounds fancy, yeah, wonderful. And a

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Speaker 1: part of paget Knov's duties would be to create software

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Speaker 1: to run on the new computers of the new hardware

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Speaker 1: they're being sent in order to test what it was

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Speaker 1: capable of, so to say like, oh, okay, yeah, this

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Speaker 1: this computer is fine because it can run this demanding

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Speaker 1: piece of software a okay. So in in paget Knov's

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Speaker 1: own words, this became his quote excuse for making games,

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Speaker 1: which I mean, that's gonna be a pretty cool job.

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Speaker 1: Comparatively in the Soviet Union in Oh yeah. I mean

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Speaker 1: that's a pretty great situation anywhere where you find the

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Speaker 1: way to make your job even more engaging, or make

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Speaker 1: it engaging to begin with, without actually just completely knocking

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Speaker 1: off and doing your own thing. Right. So, Paget knobs

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Speaker 1: in this lab testing the Electronica sixty, and what he

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Speaker 1: comes up with to test it is Tetris. Tetris is

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Speaker 1: one of these games he creates. And I don't know

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Speaker 1: to what extent we really should try to describe Tetris,

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Speaker 1: because I feel like almost everybody who's going to be

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Speaker 1: listening to this has seen Tetris. If you haven't, you

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Speaker 1: should go watch a video of somebody playing Tetris on you.

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Speaker 1: Any number of official Tetris or Tetris knockoff versions that

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Speaker 1: you can just play online. I found a free website.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if this is legal, it's probably not, actually,

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Speaker 1: but I found a website that has an emulator that

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Speaker 1: will emulate the any S version of Tetris that's in browser.

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Speaker 1: And it's pretty great that the any S version. I

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Speaker 1: really like the graphics. Yeah, yeah, it was a great

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Speaker 1: use of the you know, simple graphics to deliver the

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Speaker 1: Tetris experience, though I do still prefer the music from

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Speaker 1: the game Boy version, but Dance of the Sugar Plumb

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Speaker 1: Ferry is good to either way. You should you should

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Speaker 1: play Tetris a little get in the mood for this episode. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you can pause right here and go do that and

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00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 1: come back if you like, otherwise we will continue. But basically,

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Speaker 1: what Tetris is is you've got seven blocks of different

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Speaker 1: shapes and these are the tetrominos that we were talking

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Speaker 1: about earlier, and they fall from the top of the

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Speaker 1: screen towards the bottom of the screen on a little

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Speaker 1: playing area, and the player can move the blocks around

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Speaker 1: left to right and can rotate them in increments of

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Speaker 1: ninety degrees, so you can flip the piece and you

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Speaker 1: can move it side to side, but what you can't

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Speaker 1: do is stop it from falling. There's the inexorable creep

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Speaker 1: towards the bottom of the screen. And so what the

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00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:51,000
Speaker 1: player does is arrange the blocks to form and then

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Speaker 1: clear solid horizontal lines. Oh yeah, that's satisfying moment where

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Speaker 1: you have blocks all the way across a single line

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00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:01,639
Speaker 1: and then that that line just anishes. Yeah. And so

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Speaker 1: if the blocks stack up all the way to the

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Speaker 1: top of the screen the game is over. Interestingly enough,

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Speaker 1: Paget and Nov said that originally the lines did not

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Speaker 1: clear in the version of the game he was making,

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00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:15,199
Speaker 1: that you would just try to stack them, but he

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00:22:15,240 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: found that the screen filled up too quick. You know,

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00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,680
Speaker 1: you'd make these stacked rows, and eventually it reached the

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Speaker 1: top of the screen. So then he came up with

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Speaker 1: the idea of every time you created a solid row,

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Speaker 1: having it vanish and and just turned into magical abstract points.

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Speaker 1: Then I think it's interesting because it you can see

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Speaker 1: the roots of the recreational mathematical puzzle there right, because

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have um that much space if you were

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Speaker 1: just filling this out on a sheet of paper. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So if if the blocks stack up all the way

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Speaker 1: to the top of the screen, of course games over

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00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:51,680
Speaker 1: that that's your death in the game terms. And as

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00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,200
Speaker 1: the game goes on, the blocks begin to fall faster

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00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:57,440
Speaker 1: and faster, which of course makes it harder to fit

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00:22:57,480 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 1: them in as time goes on, and eventually in most

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00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: versions of the game, you get to something that the

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00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:06,600
Speaker 1: players would call a kill screen or a death screen,

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Speaker 1: which is in the any S version at least level

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Speaker 1: twenty nine, or the transition between level twenty nine and thirty,

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Speaker 1: where the blocks just fall so fast it's impossible to

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Speaker 1: play anymore. You cannot continue though. Actually, before we did

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Speaker 1: this episode, I watched a documentary called The Ecstasy of

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Speaker 1: Order about Tetris Champions, that which I recommend if if

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Speaker 1: you all at home, want to watch it. It was

427
00:23:29,359 --> 00:23:31,880
Speaker 1: really interesting, and there are a couple of players who

428
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: do manage to get to level thirty. In it, it's

429
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: a very brief, fleeting victory does it so that the

430
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: game itself does not stop and say, hey, you've won Tetris,

431
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:43,840
Speaker 1: but you've merely you've made it to a threshold of

432
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:47,159
Speaker 1: survivability that no one else has reached, right with a

433
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:49,840
Speaker 1: vast majority of players, you know, it's not like you've won.

434
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,199
Speaker 1: You've still died. You've just died a little bit farther

435
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,879
Speaker 1: along the track the trail, than anybody else has gone before.

436
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting thing about Tetris too. You can

437
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:12,639
Speaker 1: never win. There is no winning, there's only getting farther

438
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: before you die, which makes Tetris a lot like life.

439
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:18,679
Speaker 1: It is, yeah, and been probably a good lesson for

440
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:22,359
Speaker 1: a young gamer to encounter where you especially if you're

441
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 1: up against the impossibility of mission impossible, where there's just

442
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: no getting to the end of it, you just feel

443
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: constantly like the metal gear these dogs stop. Well, now

444
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: I'll play Tetris. It's like the experience of the game

445
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: is you're never gonna get your money's worth out of

446
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 1: that game because you're not getting to the end of it,

447
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:40,720
Speaker 1: to the narrative end of the game. But there is

448
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:43,679
Speaker 1: no narrative in Tetris other than the simple narrative of

449
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 1: shapes coming at you better stack them and try to

450
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 1: stave off the inevitable. Yeah, so what happened when Alexei

451
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: Pajitnov made this game? So he claimed he was inspired

452
00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: by his love of puzzle games like Pin tomino Is,

453
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,359
Speaker 1: the ones we were talking about before, and he he

454
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:03,679
Speaker 1: came up with the mechanics of Tetris with pentominoes in mind,

455
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:07,600
Speaker 1: but then he decided to go with tetrauminos to simplify things, basically,

456
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 1: to make the game simpler. Uh fun fact, since the

457
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:14,200
Speaker 1: Electronica sixty that he was using had very little in

458
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: the way of graphical capabilities, the original shapes were made

459
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 1: out of text characters. I think they were brackets, so

460
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,160
Speaker 1: that would make sense. So falling shapes made out of brackets,

461
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 1: I do want to throw in that there. There are

462
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:28,880
Speaker 1: plenty of other knockoffs of Tetris out there, and apparently

463
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: some of them do use pin dominoes rather than tetrauminose,

464
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: oh dude. In preparing for this episode, I played one.

465
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: There's one online called pent Trist that uses not pent

466
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:43,639
Speaker 1: Trist but but pent Trists like Tetris, and it uses

467
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,120
Speaker 1: pin dominoes, and at least in the time I played

468
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 1: it, it it was significantly harder than Tetris. Yeah. Yeah, I

469
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: imagine it would be just one more piece. Likewise, if

470
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: you were to play Tetris with simpler shapes, I imagine

471
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 1: it would the game would fall apart too easily. Like

472
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,440
Speaker 1: what if you were playing them with dominoes, that would

473
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: be that would just be base level, way too easy,

474
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:05,679
Speaker 1: to the point if you would get bored of it

475
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: almost immediately. Yeah, I think four really is the perfect number.

476
00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: I I will argue very strongly in that in that

477
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: proposition's defense. But anyway, past Not recounts to The Guardian

478
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 1: where he told his own story about this. He says,

479
00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: quote I pretended I was debugging my program, but in truth,

480
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: I just couldn't stop playing it. When other people tried it,

481
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: they couldn't either. It was so abstract that was its

482
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: great quality. It appealed to everybody. And I think this

483
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: may be something about why so many people can get

484
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: into Tetris, Even people who don't usually play video games.

485
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: They can pick up Tetris and immediately feel at home

486
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: and intrigued. And and I think it has something to

487
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:51,359
Speaker 1: do with the lack of representational nature of it. It's

488
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 1: like geometrical art you might see in a mosque or something.

489
00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 1: You know. It's like it doesn't have characters or familiar objects.

490
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:08,400
Speaker 1: It's just shapes and space and time and movement. Utterly universal, yeah, yeah,

491
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: completely devoid of any dependency on on its uh its

492
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: similarity to a real world scenario. It's completely in its

493
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:21,359
Speaker 1: own universe. Yeah. So what happens when you create an

494
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: amazing and addictive game while employed by the Soviet Union,

495
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 1: Well that was an interesting question for peasant Nov and

496
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: he kind of feared what would happen if he tried

497
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: to make money off of his game. So the game

498
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,440
Speaker 1: started getting passed around from place to place, in in Russia,

499
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 1: there were floppy disks of it that people were taking

500
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:44,719
Speaker 1: two different workplaces, and then everybody would get addicted to

501
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: it and not do their jobs, so it sort of

502
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: posed a problem. Eventually it made its way to Hungary,

503
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,119
Speaker 1: and then from Hungary it made its way to the

504
00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 1: rest of Europe, the United States, Japan, and the whole world. Um.

505
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 1: But for ten years Paget Knobs seeded the game rights

506
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: to the government to the Soviet Union and so he

507
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: didn't really see much money from Tetris for a long time.

508
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 1: But eventually once that expired in the nineties, he got

509
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: more involved. And uh, I'm not sure if how much

510
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: money he eventually made off of Tetris. I I hope,

511
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: I hope it did well for him. Yeah, yeah, I

512
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: hope so too. I certainly remember seeing his name on

513
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 1: even the ne s because his ties. Your eyes were

514
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: glued to the program and you couldn't help but notice

515
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: anything in the system that resembled the outside world, such

516
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: as such as his name or St. Basil's Cathedral which

517
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: was on the loading screen. Yeah or yeah, if you

518
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: did really well in the game, I think you could

519
00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: watch St. Basil's Cathedral being launched into space. Good goodness, gracious, Yes, yes,

520
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 1: why I haven't thought about that and forever I never

521
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: really understood why that happens, but it was. Was it

522
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: the idea that the cathedral is secretly an alien spaceship

523
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: that has been planted on Earth? And yes, and it

524
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: just it had to use our brain power, the collective

525
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: brain power of a Tetris obsessed planet, to to actually

526
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 1: launch it back into the stars. Yeah. But so, paget

527
00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: Of gives a pretty cool perspective on the role Tetris

528
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: played in the early consumer adoption of the computer. Actually,

529
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: he says Tetris came along early and had a very

530
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: important role in breaking down ordinary people's inhibitions in front

531
00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: of computers, which were scary objects to non professionals used

532
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: to pen and paper. But the fact that something so

533
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 1: simple and beautiful could appear on screen destroyed that barrier.

534
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: I like to think that's true. Yeah, yeah, I would

535
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 1: think so. I mean you think of if you think

536
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:44,479
Speaker 1: back to early computer games too, some many but not

537
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: all of them. We're a bit abstract looking on the screen,

538
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: to the point where I could see them being very intimidating.

539
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: Like I remember as a kid, we were at somebody's

540
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: house and they had at some sort of submarine simulation game,

541
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 1: and only you really had to use your imagination to

542
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: see the any kind of actual submarine uh simulation going on. Yeah, well,

543
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: I mean, have you seen any of the old TAR

544
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: twenty hundred Star Wars games where they're trying to represent

545
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: the characters from Star Wars or the ships from Star Wars,

546
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: But you know they've got a an a T a

547
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: T walker like in the Empire Strikes Back, and it's

548
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: just it's a big dog, it's like, or it's a horse,

549
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:28,240
Speaker 1: it's a four legged animal of some kind, and you're

550
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: just like some pixels flying around shooting at it. And

551
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: I don't want to to criticize limited graphics and the

552
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: importance of imagination because some of my favorite gaming experiences

553
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 1: that have yet uh to be equaled by our our

554
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: heavy graphics age are some of those where you had

555
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 1: just enough graphics graph graphical detail to give you an

556
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: idea of what it was, and the rest was your imagination.

557
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, that that's true. I just think that

558
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: there's less of a gap when you're talking about using

559
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: limited graphics to do something abstract versus to do something

560
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be representational of images you recognize. But anyway,

561
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: Tetris after this went on to become big business all

562
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: around the world. It was eventually licensed from the Russians

563
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: by a video game licensor named Hank Rogers, which led

564
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: to what was, as I've said, in my opinion, the

565
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 1: definitive version of the of Tetris with the definitive music,

566
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: Tetris on the game Boy. And so in nineteen nine

567
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 1: Nintendo released Tetris for the game Boy and the nes

568
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 1: and sold millions of copies. And then, of course in

569
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: ninete Tetris became the central game in the Do you

570
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 1: remember these the Nintendo World Championships. Oh this was there

571
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: was the Fred Savage movie The Wizard. Huh. I think

572
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: it was all promotion for that. Yes, so tech was

573
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: Tetris in The Wizard. It's been I've seen you know what,

574
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen The Wizard. I remember virtually nothing.

575
00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 1: I think it was. Wasn't it just a commercial for

576
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: the power of love pretty much? But this is the

577
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: perfect game for for that kind of scenario, right, because

578
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: it's a it's a test of a true test of skill. Yeah, absolutely,

579
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: I think it makes perfect sense for this to be

580
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:14,200
Speaker 1: the central game and a video game competition, because, like

581
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: I say, it's so universal, it feels so core, so ancient,

582
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: it's like the ultimate game, and there's something about playing

583
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:27,480
Speaker 1: Tetris that is so inherently human. One of the things,

584
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 1: an interesting fact I came across about Tetris is that

585
00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: Tetris is considered, it's in computational theory, a hard problem.

586
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 1: It's considered MP complete, meaning that even a computer cannot

587
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 1: play perfect Tetris. You can't write a computer program that

588
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: automatically optimizes Tetris moves and always makes the best move

589
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:53,640
Speaker 1: because there is no known strategy for always determining the

590
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: optimal move. And this is not the case for a

591
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: lot of games. There are games like Connect four or

592
00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:02,240
Speaker 1: you know, play many of other puzzle games where there

593
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: is inherently a best move you can make that you know,

594
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: a lot of times humans might not have enough computational

595
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 1: ability to know what it is, but a computer can know. Yeah,

596
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: I think we can all relate to that and from

597
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 1: our Tetris playing experience. Because you start off with the

598
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: definite strategy in mind, generally you want to build it

599
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: up so that you can shoot down a vertical um

600
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,680
Speaker 1: tetramino and just clear four rows at once, and then

601
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: do that again. Do that as many times as you can,

602
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 1: but you're gonna reach that point where that's no longer

603
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: an option. Where each shape, each new shape as it comes,

604
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 1: and maybe you have the preview box that tells you

605
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: what the next one is going to be. You can

606
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: try and crunch that data as well, but it's very

607
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 1: much a real time problem from from block to block. Yeah. Yeah,

608
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: the preview boxes actually, I think a really important part

609
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,320
Speaker 1: of Tetris strategy. I don't know if I mentioned that

610
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,120
Speaker 1: when I was describing Tetris earlier. I mean, you've played Tetris,

611
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: you know. But the big thing about Tetris strategy is

612
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:57,959
Speaker 1: it will show you not just the block that's currently falling,

613
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 1: but what the next block up is. But after that

614
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 1: it's a big mystery. And and even the computer can't

615
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: solve this problem. There is no computer that that can

616
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:12,400
Speaker 1: solve Tetris. It's a it's a mystery. It's an ancient mystery,

617
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: I insist it is. Okay, So in this episode, we're

618
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: eventually going to talk about the neurological effects of Tetris

619
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:23,840
Speaker 1: on the human brain, the sort of the psychology and

620
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 1: neurology of Tetris. But before we get into that, we

621
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 1: got to mention one more thing about Tetris and culture,

622
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: which is all of the wonderful Tetris knockoffs that have

623
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: that have come from this game. Because, like anything that

624
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: sells millions and millions of copies and becomes up a

625
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 1: phenomenon like Tetris, you're gonna see other people want to

626
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: get in on the on the action and put their

627
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 1: own particular spin on it. And a lot of many

628
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: of them are great, They're perfectly serviceable. They're just complete

629
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: rip offs. Sometimes they try and add their own thing,

630
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: like trying to use a different polyomino in order in

631
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: order to spice things up. But one of my favorites

632
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:04,439
Speaker 1: is just pure fluff on top of a traditional Tetris game,

633
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:08,360
Speaker 1: and that's the release Monty Python and the Quest for

634
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail, a PC game which included a Tetris

635
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: mini game called drop Dead that involved fabulously throwing plague

636
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,439
Speaker 1: victims into a mass grave. So so they were shaped, Yes,

637
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: each Tetromino is shaped like a medieval peasant, and sometimes

638
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 1: their body has been you know this way or that,

639
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,720
Speaker 1: or they're just completely straight, but you're throw you're throwing

640
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,240
Speaker 1: those into the mass grave, and the bodies keep piling

641
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:37,640
Speaker 1: up and they're falling faster like any kind of a

642
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 1: Tetris game, with the added feature that sometimes one isn't

643
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,920
Speaker 1: quite dead yet and makes it makes moving it around

644
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: more challenging because it's you know, fighting back and trying

645
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: to to wiggle free, and you just want to throw

646
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: as many bodies into the mass grave as possible, right, Yeah,

647
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: you got a job to do. Yeah, So that's that's

648
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: the best I've I've ever seen. Um, you have been

649
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: various other attempts to spice it up. There was a

650
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 1: particularly it was a two thousand four mini game in

651
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat Deception. Oh man, they're still making Mortal Kombat

652
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: games in two thousand four. Yeah, they still make them today,

653
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: I guess. So. Yeah, in Mortal Kombat X just came out.

654
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think everyone beyond Mortal Kombat

655
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:22,319
Speaker 1: three in the arcade game version, well there was. You know,

656
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,200
Speaker 1: four was kind of a I think a dark point

657
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. But I know that they

658
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: put up They've put out some great games in recent times. Uh,

659
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 1: but the Tetris mini game in two thousand four was

660
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: not actually so great. It was just like typical Tetris

661
00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: with some little bobble head Mortal Kombat characters. I think

662
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,439
Speaker 1: they would have been far better off just ripping off

663
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: Monty Python's take on it and just have you know,

664
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:50,239
Speaker 1: dead monks and ninjas falling into a pit. Yeah, so, uh,

665
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: Katana's out there doing finishing moves on people and throwing

666
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 1: all their dead body parts into the I can see that,

667
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:58,799
Speaker 1: but they were probably you know, pressed for time, So

668
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 1: that seems like they've got uh, just violent variations on

669
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,399
Speaker 1: Tetris basically. Yeah. But then there's also the sexy take.

670
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: And I'm going to leave you the listener to explore

671
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:12,399
Speaker 1: this more on your own. I don't know if there

672
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,399
Speaker 1: is a definitive sexy Tetris, but it looks like they're

673
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: various scenarios that involve humanoid tetraumino's interlocking with each other.

674
00:37:21,600 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: So it's it seems inherently disturbing, like stacking sex. I guess,

675
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,520
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a Kama Sutra um group sex

676
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 1: take on Tetris. It's out there if you want to

677
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: explore it. Uh, and then I think they also just

678
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: have Tetris with a backdrop of a naked person or something,

679
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 1: so that exists as well, um an interesting attempt to

680
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: put some sort of fluff on top of of this

681
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 1: most perfect game. You don't need that. That would be distracting.

682
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,279
Speaker 1: It's Tetris, That's what I'm thinking. I mean, are you

683
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: trying to mess with Tetris. Yeah, it seems like you

684
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: would have only that's the kind of game, and you

685
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,160
Speaker 1: would only play for a few minutes and go like

686
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: ha ha, that's clever, or oh, that's not really clever,

687
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: and then you'd move back to just playing pure Tetris. Right.

688
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: One of the Tetris arcade games I saw in the

689
00:38:10,320 --> 00:38:12,680
Speaker 1: in the documentary I was talking about earlier, the Ecstasy

690
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 1: of Order is invisible Tetris. I didn't know about this before,

691
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: but that's where you can only see the blocks while

692
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,879
Speaker 1: they're falling, but once they land, they become invisible. I

693
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 1: can't even imagine trying to play that. That sounds really

694
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: frustratingly hard. I would again, I'd rather just play regular Tetris,

695
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: And of course would be remiss if we didn't mention

696
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:32,719
Speaker 1: the various three D forms of Tetris that have come

697
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: out where you're using three dimensional tetrominos and trying to

698
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: assemble them, and I've played those before. Those those I

699
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 1: feel like those are also fun for a limited amount

700
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: of time, and then you want to go back to

701
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:48,520
Speaker 1: good old two dimensional Tetris. We keep saying Texas instead

702
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: of Tetris. It makes me think that there should be

703
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: a geographical representations or like you know, US States represented

704
00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 1: as as as square block formations that you try to

705
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: fit together. Yeah, yeah, the United States as an assemblage,

706
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:07,640
Speaker 1: like how does Tennessee fit into Texas? And I guess

707
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: you couldn't do it proportionally because every time in Alaska fell,

708
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: the game would just be over. But we should take

709
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,319
Speaker 1: a break to hear from our sponsor, and then when

710
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about some of

711
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: the brain science of Tetris, some of the science that

712
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: has been done on how Tetris affects our minds. Hey,

713
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: we're back, So it is time to talk about something

714
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: that has been called in the media the Tetris effect

715
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: or Tetris syndrome, which I like that one even more

716
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,399
Speaker 1: because it has a slotting, nefarious air to it. Yeah,

717
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: so I have talked about how I think Tetris is

718
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 1: an ancient mystery, But have you ever noticed how the

719
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: six rectangular pains on each half of a home window

720
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,320
Speaker 1: and form all of the Tetris blocks, except, of course

721
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: the most beautiful and most cherished of all blocks, the

722
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:09,440
Speaker 1: long bar. But all the other blocks, you know, you

723
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:12,959
Speaker 1: with you've got the six pains arranged in the two

724
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: by three formation. You can make the T, you can

725
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 1: make the L, you can make the S and the

726
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 1: Z and the square. And how the corners of the

727
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 1: coffee table in your house are kind of like L

728
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 1: blocks that just fits so nicely against the square block.

729
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:32,360
Speaker 1: That really is the essence of this foot rest. And really,

730
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: when droplets of water bed together on a rain splashed

731
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:38,719
Speaker 1: window and eventually flow away, it really is a lot

732
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: like how the stacks of blocks will away from viewing

733
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: Tetris once you've completed four solid lines. And then of

734
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,880
Speaker 1: course you begin to see how the Tetris blocks do

735
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: come creeping down from the darkness at night when you

736
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,640
Speaker 1: lie in bed, and they follow you into your dreams.

737
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: And how I'm going to stop you there, Joe, because

738
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: this sounds like, if not Tetris in drone, or the

739
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:04,359
Speaker 1: Tetris effect, perhaps even Tetris madness, full blown Tetris madness. Yeah,

740
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:08,760
Speaker 1: this is what most people have described as the Tetris effect.

741
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,720
Speaker 1: It's in short, when Tetris players have dreams or mild

742
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 1: hallucinations about the game, the mechanics and visual aesthetic of

743
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:20,919
Speaker 1: the game follow you beyond the game play itself into

744
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: your life. You see Tetris in the world, You hallucinate

745
00:41:24,800 --> 00:41:27,840
Speaker 1: blocks and places where they're not, and you dream about

746
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: them as you're falling asleep at night. I definitely remember

747
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: this from that Christmas that we got Tetris, playing it

748
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: for ab certain a number of hours, and then afterwards

749
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: you close your eyes and then against the darkness, you

750
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:42,359
Speaker 1: see the blocks falling. And then you're trying to sleep

751
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: at night and you see the blocks following, and you're

752
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: dreaming and the blocks are still falling. And it was

753
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,760
Speaker 1: never frightening, but it was just it was like unlike

754
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 1: anything I'd experienced before. It was essentially a paranormal experience, uh,

755
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: but but one that was so abstract, so so with

756
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: out narrative. It wasn't like I was seeing space, aliens

757
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: or anything. You were just seeing the pure uh, geometric

758
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: wonder of Tetris playing through your your vision, you know.

759
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: I looked up online to see if this had happened

760
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:16,960
Speaker 1: with any other games, and it certainly has, I think,

761
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: maybe not to the same extent as Tetris. But I

762
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: googled Minecraft hallucinations. I've never played Minecraft, but I just

763
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:25,879
Speaker 1: wanted to see what you'd come up with, and oh yeah,

764
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 1: I found some Yahoo q and Yahoo answers and some

765
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: forum threads where people are like, I'm I'm dreaming about

766
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 1: things from Minecraft and I'm seeing Minecraft blocks all over

767
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: the place. This does seem to be a way in

768
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:48,719
Speaker 1: which our brains are susceptible to visuospatial tasks or images

769
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: that we have to manipulate in a virtual world, especially

770
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: in something as addictive and engrossing as Tetris. And this

771
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: has been reported on for a while now. The earliest

772
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: reference I can find to the term the Tetris effect, uh,

773
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: and this seems to be Most people say that this

774
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: is the first time the term appears is in article

775
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:16,799
Speaker 1: called this is Your Brain on Tetris from Wired. Yes,

776
00:43:17,440 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: great article, it's still off online, you can still access it. Yeah.

777
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: So it was written by Jeffrey Goldsmith and if you're

778
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: too young to remember the this is your brain on

779
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 1: drugs commercials, And I don't know how widespread that reference

780
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:32,359
Speaker 1: point is anymore. Uh. It was, well, it was one

781
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 1: of the most charming touchstones of the nineteen eighties propaganda

782
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,479
Speaker 1: war against narcotics. But guy's got an egg. He holds

783
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: up the egg, he says, this is your brain. He

784
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:43,239
Speaker 1: cracks it, drops it in a pan, fries it says,

785
00:43:43,360 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: this is your brain on drugs. Yeah. Great, great marketing. Uh,

786
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: but but the the effectiveness of that marketing is a

787
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 1: is a topic unto itself for sure. Yeah. So the

788
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 1: obvious implication is of Goldsmith's title this is your Brain

789
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 1: on Tetris is that he's sort of accusing Tetris of

790
00:44:00,640 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 1: being a hallucinogen or some kind of psychotropic agent. Uh.

791
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:08,319
Speaker 1: Yet he also brings over the associations with addictiveness or

792
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 1: compulsive behavior. And I would just want to read a

793
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: quote from his article. He says, no home was sweet

794
00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: without a game boy. In nineteen that year, I stayed

795
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: for a week with a friend in Tokyo. For a

796
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: week in quotation marks I think meaning longer. Uh, And

797
00:44:26,440 --> 00:44:30,960
Speaker 1: Tetris enslaved my brain at night, geometric shapes fell in

798
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:33,360
Speaker 1: the darkness as I lay on the loan to Tommy

799
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:37,240
Speaker 1: floor space days I sat on a lavender suede sofa

800
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: and played Tetris furiously. During rare jaunts from the house,

801
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,360
Speaker 1: I visually fit cars and trees and people together, dubiously.

802
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,879
Speaker 1: Hunting a job in a house. I was still there

803
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:52,840
Speaker 1: two months later, still jobless, still playing. My friend, an economist,

804
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 1: threatened a battery deprivation, but he knew my habit ran deep,

805
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 1: knew that I could always tilt, blinded by sunlight, to

806
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 1: a convenience store to save face. I would buy a

807
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: box of tiny chocolate filled bears, as if double A

808
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: power cells were an afterthought, not the meaning of my

809
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: wretched life. Uh. And he also refers to Tetris later

810
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: in the article as an electronic drug or and this

811
00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: is a great term, a pharmatronic pharmatronic. I like it.

812
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 1: I don't know if that later appeared in like William

813
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,400
Speaker 1: Gibson novels or something, but it sounds like it should.

814
00:45:28,200 --> 00:45:31,400
Speaker 1: But anyway. Goldsmith then reports on some research we're going

815
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: to describe in in just a minute about what the

816
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: brain of a Tetris player looks like. But the term

817
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:42,359
Speaker 1: Tetris effect shows up later in his article where he says,

818
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 1: the Tetris effect is a biochemical reductionistic metaphor, if you will,

819
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: for curiosity invention. The creative urge to fit shapes together

820
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 1: is to organize, to build, to make deals, to fix,

821
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 1: to understand, to fold sheets. All of our mental activities

822
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:03,240
Speaker 1: are now all guess each as potentially addictive as the next.

823
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 1: So once again we see that tetris it's a perfect

824
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:11,000
Speaker 1: metaphor for just about everything we do in our life. Yeah,

825
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 1: I mean not only just the inevitability of of annihilation,

826
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:18,160
Speaker 1: but just the it's just our the basic way that

827
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: we tackle mental tasks. It combines the the seeking order effect,

828
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 1: like we're trying to create solid blocks out of these

829
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:33,239
Speaker 1: you know, disordered, unfitting shapes, and so we're seeking to

830
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,279
Speaker 1: create order to impose order on a chaotic universe. But

831
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: it also has the uh, the task clearance type of

832
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: mechanic that we use throughout our daily work lives. You know,

833
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,399
Speaker 1: you have a you have a to do list, and

834
00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 1: the most satisfying part of every day is crossing that

835
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,840
Speaker 1: thing off your to do list, which in Tetris, you get,

836
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,319
Speaker 1: you get to do constantly. You know, every some number

837
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,320
Speaker 1: of seconds you clear a line and it disappears and

838
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:02,839
Speaker 1: quite literally disappear years and and being crossed automatically off

839
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:07,800
Speaker 1: your to do list. So it Tetris again mimics life,

840
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 1: and sometimes life throws some bad blocks at you and

841
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 1: you just have to accept that you're not going to

842
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 1: fit into your order. But maybe that next block will

843
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: help you work this one out and it is eventually

844
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: you'll create some sort of order around it. Yeah, I

845
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 1: think that's entirely true. And if you listen to these

846
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,359
Speaker 1: professional Tetris players, the one who are the ones who

847
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: get really deep into it, you know they'll they'll talk

848
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: about the sort of the fortune goddess of Tetris, the

849
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: Tetris god who doles out good blocks and bad blocks,

850
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: and you know they to a certain extent, the blocks

851
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: you get are randomized, um, but they're randomized in a

852
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:49,800
Speaker 1: particular way. There's this thing referred to as a bag

853
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:51,799
Speaker 1: that keeps a certain number of blocks in it and

854
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,080
Speaker 1: you get you get the blocks from the bag and

855
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: then it's re randomized. But uh that like you can

856
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: get a good run where they'll get view lots of

857
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: long bars, and it's very nice happy times to be

858
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 1: to to be irritating though, if you've got too many

859
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:10,399
Speaker 1: long bars, Like, why am I getting all these long

860
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: bars now? I'm just having to just throw them on

861
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:15,919
Speaker 1: top of each other horizontally at the bottom. I need

862
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:18,879
Speaker 1: these later to to really drive home and kill Yeah,

863
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 1: why wasn't I getting these long bars when I was

864
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: getting like seventeen s and Z bars. Uh? Those S

865
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:27,959
Speaker 1: and Z bars really are the worst. They're the ones

866
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: that make the game as as cruel as it is.

867
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:33,960
Speaker 1: But there was another quote I wanted to read, actually,

868
00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:39,400
Speaker 1: that was from a psychologist, Russian psychologist named Vladimir Pokilko,

869
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: and this sort of addresses the Tetris effect. Pokilko was

870
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,800
Speaker 1: a friend and partner of Alexei Pechetna, of the creator

871
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: of Tetris Tetris and he was one of the original

872
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: patients in the first outbreak of Tetris madness in Russia

873
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four. He he got to play it

874
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: before it was a commercial item, back when it was

875
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:03,240
Speaker 1: a secret brain infection being traded on floppy disks around

876
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: in Moscow. And he says about Tetris quote. The main

877
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,960
Speaker 1: part is visual insight. You make your visual decision and

878
00:49:11,000 --> 00:49:15,399
Speaker 1: it happens almost immediately. Insight means emotion, small but many

879
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: of them every two three seconds. The second mechanism is

880
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 1: unfinished action. Tetris has many unfinished actions that force you

881
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:28,280
Speaker 1: to continue and make it very addictive. The third is automization.

882
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: In a couple of hours, the activity becomes automatic, a habit,

883
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 1: a motivation to repeat. So, yeah, you've got some explanations

884
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: there for maybe some of the cognitive appeal of constantly

885
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 1: returning to thoughts of Tetris. Of it's sort of taking

886
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:45,400
Speaker 1: over your brain because you've got the pleasing feeling of

887
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 1: solving a visual problem. You've got in the constant reward

888
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:53,040
Speaker 1: every time you solve it. You've got the unfinished action

889
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:55,279
Speaker 1: always drawing you back to the problem. There is no

890
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:59,640
Speaker 1: conclusion to Tetris. You never finish it. It's impossible, and

891
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: so failure is never super frustrating because failure is inevitable. Yeah,

892
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 1: and then, of course the thirty says is automization. Eventually

893
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: it becomes uh, not so much a deliberate action, but

894
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 1: just an automatic part of your brain. You do it

895
00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 1: without even thinking. Yeah, I do also want to mention,

896
00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: while researching the articles about the Tetris effect in the

897
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:25,880
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, that I came across some frankly hilarious or

898
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:31,359
Speaker 1: at least retrospectively hilarious scare articles about games and technology

899
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: destroying your brain. Uh there, Oh man, it was so

900
00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:39,800
Speaker 1: funny about talking about this theory from the ninety nineties

901
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 1: called cyber sickness. There there was a paper from the

902
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,920
Speaker 1: Technology Review in the nineties called cyber Sickness Virtual Reality's

903
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:50,840
Speaker 1: dark Side. It's really funny looking back on the techno

904
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: paranoia of a previous age, especially when it's addressed at

905
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: things that we now consider to be so inherently harmless.

906
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: I mean, who is worried about a virtual reality because

907
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: it turned out to be such a bust and be Tetris? Yeah? Well,

908
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 1: I think you could. There is a case to be

909
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:13,200
Speaker 1: made that certainly there are destructive elements to obsessive video

910
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:15,319
Speaker 1: game playing. So well sure, I mean if it comes

911
00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 1: at a if you spend enough time on it, that

912
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: it's at a cost to your life. But that's certainly

913
00:51:20,760 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: not that. Yeah, nothing that would that that that really

914
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: matches up to that headline cyber sickness. Virtual reality is

915
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: dark side. Yeah, but I think now we need to

916
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:35,839
Speaker 1: look at some neuroscience and psychiatry to see what's going

917
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: on when you play Tetris and how it affects your brain. Yes,

918
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 1: certainly the research underlying these Tetris observations that we've been

919
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: discussing here. So one of the first big ones came

920
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:53,279
Speaker 1: out in ninet This is from a Richard Hare of

921
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:56,960
Speaker 1: the University of California at Irvine's Department of Psychiatry and

922
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,879
Speaker 1: Human Behavior. So they did what you not expect. They

923
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: scanned the brains of Tetris players. Okay, this is interesting

924
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:07,000
Speaker 1: because it's not just psychology here. They're not just getting

925
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 1: people to reflect subjectively on their Tetris experience, but they're

926
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 1: gathering physical evidence about playing Tetris. What does it actually

927
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: look like? Yeah? So yeah, they're looking and and actually

928
00:52:18,160 --> 00:52:21,359
Speaker 1: looking at brain behavior during the playing of Tetris at

929
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:26,960
Speaker 1: varying stages. So hair is suspected and ultimately found that

930
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: the brain requires less energy to play higher levels of

931
00:52:31,120 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: tetris um as opposed to lower levels, which which sounds

932
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 1: crazy at first because we all know how how easy

933
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,759
Speaker 1: those early levels are and when you first start playing it.

934
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:44,360
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's pretty easy going higher levels. That

935
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 1: gets so fast. Yeah, that's when the stress really you

936
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:48,880
Speaker 1: think that would be when it was just you'd have

937
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 1: maximum cognition levels going on. But uh, so, this is

938
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 1: what they found in first time users. Tetris significantly raises

939
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 1: cerebral glucose metabolic rates or g m rs. So brain

940
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 1: energy consumption soars as your head cheese tackles this puzzle

941
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:09,680
Speaker 1: for the first time. So your your brain is it's

942
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:12,200
Speaker 1: it's dealing with a difficult task and it says, I

943
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,320
Speaker 1: need sugar, give me energy. Yeah, and especially with Tetris,

944
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 1: and I imagine especially for someone who is, you know,

945
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 1: a novice to puzzle games of this nature, you're suddenly

946
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:25,480
Speaker 1: encountering this game that is easy to get into but

947
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: drastically different in its presentation compared to anything else you've

948
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 1: done before. Yeah, so you said this was funny. You

949
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:34,240
Speaker 1: said in first time users, I assume you meant players,

950
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:35,839
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you were making a drug

951
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: joke there. I can't remember you have users the term

952
00:53:38,600 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 1: that I threw in or if I picked that up

953
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 1: from the original study. But um, but so, so those

954
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:46,439
Speaker 1: were the novices. What happened after that? Okay, So after

955
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:50,399
Speaker 1: four to eight weeks of daily doses of Tetris, uh,

956
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:56,720
Speaker 1: g mrs sink to normal while performance increases seven fold. Okay,

957
00:53:57,120 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: and so ultimately Tetris masters have the lowest final g

958
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 1: mrs of all. So as your skill increases and you

959
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: get more and more, you become the Tetris master. The

960
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: thing it tells you at the end, if you do

961
00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:14,320
Speaker 1: really good, congratulations, you are Tetris master. Um, your brain

962
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,279
Speaker 1: uses less energy to get you there. Yeah, I mean,

963
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:21,440
Speaker 1: in effect, Tetris tain't trains your brain, uh and become

964
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: to become more efficient at carrying the cognitive load required

965
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 1: to solve the puzzle. Man, that seems so counterintuitive. Yeah,

966
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:31,120
Speaker 1: but here's the thing. Those high GMR levels they leave

967
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 1: you feeling all amped up and uh and this is uh,

968
00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:36,359
Speaker 1: this is your brain amped up to learn something new

969
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:39,359
Speaker 1: and guzzling down that energy to make it happen. And uh,

970
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: once it has acquired the skills, it ceases to guzzle

971
00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:47,600
Speaker 1: all that glucose. So so yeah, it's your brain crunching

972
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: this new problem, figuring out how to how to solve it,

973
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to solve it, uh with with

974
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:55,640
Speaker 1: a with a lower energy expenditure. Yeah. So, as Hair says,

975
00:54:55,880 --> 00:54:59,919
Speaker 1: the brain might just become more efficient as the tet

976
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: trisp becomes or the Tetris solving program in your brain,

977
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: as he says, becomes more unconscious and automatic. Yeah. Alright,

978
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 1: So the next study we're gonna look at answers that

979
00:55:10,520 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 1: question that many of you might have. What if the

980
00:55:12,560 --> 00:55:16,799
Speaker 1: dude from Memento, the guy, the Guy Pierce character, what

981
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:19,440
Speaker 1: would happen if he played Tetris? Okay, so you're not

982
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,799
Speaker 1: talking about Joe Panaliono. No, we're talking talking about Guy

983
00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: Pierce's uh no short no, no new memories, dude, Interiro

984
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,879
Speaker 1: grade amnesia. He can't form new episodic memories and things

985
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:33,759
Speaker 1: that have recently happened. Yeah, what would happen if he

986
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 1: played Tetris? Well, Luckily there's a study that examines this.

987
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 1: This is a two thousand study by Harvard psychiatrist Robert

988
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 1: Stitt Gold. So he set out to study a similar

989
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 1: feeling to that of playing Tetris, uh, that of a

990
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 1: mountain climber who continues to feel the rocks beneath his

991
00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 1: or her hands after a day of climbing, and I

992
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: imagine this is similar to you know, that feeling as

993
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:58,240
Speaker 1: you lay in bad after a day on the beach

994
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: and the surf, where you still feel the surf, or

995
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 1: certainly something that comes to my mind and also and

996
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: also reminds me of of Tetris hallucinations and Tetris dreams

997
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 1: is that when I worked in newspapers, I did a

998
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:14,840
Speaker 1: lot of pagination in design to build these pages in

999
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: the paper, sort of a form of tetris. Really yeah.

1000
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 1: I would often refer to it as word tetris, because

1001
00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:23,040
Speaker 1: it's just words and images articles, and you're blocking all

1002
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 1: the pieces together and a lot of times they are

1003
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: shaped like Tetris blocks to form this complete whole. And

1004
00:56:28,680 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 1: of course there's the added stress though that this is

1005
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: a product that is eventually going to be printed and

1006
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 1: sent out to all these people, and you don't want

1007
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:38,000
Speaker 1: there to be any errors. And there's so many, so

1008
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:40,160
Speaker 1: many places that there can be an error if only

1009
00:56:40,239 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: you could have the crutch of adjusting the kerning on

1010
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:47,319
Speaker 1: a real Tetris block. So the uh, yeah, a little

1011
00:56:47,480 --> 00:56:51,640
Speaker 1: little pagination humor for for everyone out there. Um, But

1012
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:54,799
Speaker 1: but I remember having dreams at night where I was

1013
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 1: in my bed, laying in my bed, and the pillows

1014
00:56:57,560 --> 00:57:01,239
Speaker 1: in the bed were either illustration or articles on a

1015
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:03,799
Speaker 1: on a on a page and in design, and that

1016
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:06,200
Speaker 1: if I moved in the bed at all, it would

1017
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: upset the arrangement of the front page of the newspaper. Yeah,

1018
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 1: so it's that sort of thing. Or if you're if

1019
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:15,000
Speaker 1: you're a Tetris player, it's Tetris hallucinations. If you're a

1020
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:19,640
Speaker 1: rock climber, it's uh, it's kind of rock hasustinagency experience

1021
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: after the fact. Yeah, So I gotta mention talking about

1022
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: the study the title of it, because the title is

1023
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: too good to miss. It's called replaying the game hypnogogic

1024
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: images in normals and amnesis normals, normals, normals, alright, normals.

1025
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: This is how it all went down. So stick Old

1026
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,360
Speaker 1: asked twenty seven participants to play seven hours of Tetris

1027
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:45,280
Speaker 1: over the course of three days. There are three groups

1028
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: involved in the study, twelve novices okay, okay, novice Tatris players,

1029
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:55,920
Speaker 1: ten experts they're referred to as Tetris masters, and five

1030
00:57:56,120 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 1: amnesis with extensive bilateral medial temporal lobe damage. These five

1031
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: individuals were absolutely unable to learn and retain new episodic memories. Okay,

1032
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:10,880
Speaker 1: so if you sat them down and taught them how

1033
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 1: to play Tetris and then met them again the next day,

1034
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:16,479
Speaker 1: they would not remember that that had happened exactly. Yeah,

1035
00:58:16,880 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 1: so this is what they found. So the novices and

1036
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: experts all reported that they saw Tetris pieces floating down

1037
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:24,240
Speaker 1: in front of their eyes as they were going to

1038
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 1: sleep at night. Not surprising, we know that's how it works.

1039
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: It's expected. However, the even the amnesics saw the blocks

1040
00:58:32,440 --> 00:58:35,680
Speaker 1: at night, even though they could not remember playing the game,

1041
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: and as it turns out, they actually could play it.

1042
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:42,280
Speaker 1: Just find the quote. The performance of the amnesic patients

1043
00:58:42,360 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 1: showed only minimal, albeit significant improvement over seven hours of play.

1044
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 1: So their brains were still learning to play Tetris even

1045
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 1: though they had no memories. Yeah, they weren't learning as

1046
00:58:54,520 --> 00:58:57,720
Speaker 1: well as the other novices, right, but they still were learning. Yeah.

1047
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:02,439
Speaker 1: Uh strange And and this gets in of course, into

1048
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:06,680
Speaker 1: the fact that there are numerous ways that memory works

1049
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:08,960
Speaker 1: in the brain. There are different forms of memory. The

1050
00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:14,400
Speaker 1: two most important ones here for our purposes are as follows.

1051
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:16,520
Speaker 1: First of all, in the hippocampus you have. This is

1052
00:59:16,520 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: the area that registers those episodic memories, the very memories

1053
00:59:19,600 --> 00:59:23,040
Speaker 1: that the musics here could not form, explicit memories of

1054
00:59:23,120 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 1: actual life events, episodic memories, Yeah, what happened yesterday? What

1055
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 1: did I do? What was it like? Playing tetris? But

1056
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: then the cortex registers implicit memories. This is stuff we learned,

1057
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: but no, don't necessarily have conscious access to. So might

1058
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: this be something like how to ride a bike or

1059
00:59:41,760 --> 00:59:46,080
Speaker 1: things like that? Yeah? Things uh? Or imagine many of

1060
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:49,920
Speaker 1: you encounter this with with passwords or things you type

1061
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: into the computer. Sometimes you can't you can't say what

1062
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:54,480
Speaker 1: it is. You have to do it too and then

1063
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: rediscover what you're actually doing. You've made that method memory,

1064
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 1: but but you don't have a direct recall of the event.

1065
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 1: So this study the experiences of the amnesics here's suggests

1066
01:00:07,600 --> 01:00:11,360
Speaker 1: that tetris syndrome is as much a matter of implicit

1067
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 1: memory as anything else, and that the brain is extracting

1068
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:19,360
Speaker 1: memories from our experience even subconsciously. Um. And then furthermore

1069
01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: that as memory consolidation UH takes place during sleep, tetris

1070
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:27,840
Speaker 1: divisions may stand out as a manifestation of that process.

1071
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think this is taken as evidence in

1072
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:35,000
Speaker 1: favor of the hypothesis. I don't know to what degree

1073
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:38,880
Speaker 1: it's a hypothesis or a widely accepted theory, but the

1074
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:43,120
Speaker 1: idea at least that memory consolidation is what dreaming is

1075
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:46,920
Speaker 1: largely about, yes, in sleep. Do you know how accepted

1076
01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:49,640
Speaker 1: that idea is? I mean, is that pretty solid or

1077
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 1: it's pretty solid based on an episode recorded earlier in

1078
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 1: the year where I was researching the power of naps

1079
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 1: and the importance of naps at the Nott. Memory formation

1080
01:01:01,080 --> 01:01:03,200
Speaker 1: came up a lot in that, so I think it's

1081
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: pretty accepted. Huh. Okay, Well, that's interesting because the idea

1082
01:01:07,520 --> 01:01:12,520
Speaker 1: that memory consolidation takes place during dreams and sleeping is

1083
01:01:12,520 --> 01:01:15,520
Speaker 1: going to come into play in a paper that I'm

1084
01:01:15,520 --> 01:01:17,680
Speaker 1: going to reference in the next episode, which will also

1085
01:01:17,680 --> 01:01:22,560
Speaker 1: be Tetris themed. So this science is fascinating because, uh,

1086
01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:26,800
Speaker 1: it explains something that is disturbingly common. I mean, one

1087
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 1: of it would be one thing if every now and

1088
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 1: then some weirdo said, well I I hallucinated Tetris blocks.

1089
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 1: But this seems to be completely normal, completely widespread for

1090
01:01:36,680 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: people who play the game. It takes over their brain

1091
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:41,600
Speaker 1: in this way and sticks with them, and they hallucinate

1092
01:01:41,640 --> 01:01:44,680
Speaker 1: the blocks later. So I decided, as I said earlier,

1093
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 1: to search around and see if this happened with other games.

1094
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:51,240
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, there are people talking about Minecraft hallucinations,

1095
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:54,200
Speaker 1: and there are people who talk about hallucinations related to

1096
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:57,920
Speaker 1: other games. So the principle of seeing the world in

1097
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: terms of visuo space, show game elements, or even experiencing

1098
01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:06,920
Speaker 1: hallucinations of auditory and visual elements from games is not

1099
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 1: unique to Tetris, though with Tetris it might be stronger

1100
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:14,600
Speaker 1: than average, or maybe even much stronger than average. But anyway,

1101
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:18,200
Speaker 1: that leads some experts to want to group what we're

1102
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:22,240
Speaker 1: calling the Tetris effect under the broader category of what's

1103
01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: called game transfer phenomenon. Uh So, there has been some

1104
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 1: research on this, but essentially it's been based on interviews

1105
01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 1: and interacting with people who play video games and cataloging

1106
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: their experience to see if they transfer elements of game

1107
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 1: content or game interface into their real lives. I've seen

1108
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,920
Speaker 1: accounts of individuals claiming to see health buyers from playing

1109
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 1: a World of Warcraft, and I definitely remember like the

1110
01:02:52,640 --> 01:02:57,520
Speaker 1: only other game transfer um phenomenon that I can attest

1111
01:02:57,520 --> 01:02:59,720
Speaker 1: to my own life would be from playing way too

1112
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:03,160
Speaker 1: my grand Theft Auto Vice City, and I can't for

1113
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:05,360
Speaker 1: the life of me, I can't exactly remember what I

1114
01:03:05,400 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 1: was seeing, but I would go from playing a lot

1115
01:03:08,400 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: of that too, then driving to work, which was stealing

1116
01:03:12,600 --> 01:03:15,640
Speaker 1: cars also well luckily I didn't go that far, but certainly,

1117
01:03:15,680 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: the the experience of driving the cars in the game

1118
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:23,840
Speaker 1: was was what was was impacting the way that I

1119
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:28,040
Speaker 1: observed driving a car in real life, which was a

1120
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:30,120
Speaker 1: little scary considering all the things you do with cars

1121
01:03:30,160 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 1: in that game. That is a little scary. And that

1122
01:03:32,360 --> 01:03:35,680
Speaker 1: figure is big into how the media has covered this, uh,

1123
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:40,560
Speaker 1: this scientific recognition of video game of game transfer phenomenon.

1124
01:03:41,160 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: But there there are much smaller, more innocuous versions of this.

1125
01:03:45,120 --> 01:03:48,360
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever said, let's press pause or

1126
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:51,920
Speaker 1: I just leveled up on something about a real world situation,

1127
01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: achievement unlocked exactly? Yeah, somebody somebody tweets achievement unlocked Swedish

1128
01:03:57,120 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: meatballs for breakfast. I mean, uh, that is that is

1129
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 1: an example of game transfer phenomenon. You're you're porting something

1130
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:08,320
Speaker 1: about the game content or experience into your daily life

1131
01:04:08,360 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: outside the game. It kind of goes back to our

1132
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:13,200
Speaker 1: techno religionist episodes that we recorded where we talked about

1133
01:04:13,200 --> 01:04:18,160
Speaker 1: how you can't help but incorporate technology into your symbolic

1134
01:04:18,280 --> 01:04:22,400
Speaker 1: metaphorical understanding of reality. And so I often think of

1135
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:25,640
Speaker 1: like in many different topics that apply to the human experience.

1136
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 1: I often think in terms of the health bar and

1137
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 1: some of the type of bar or whether you're talking particularly.

1138
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:34,840
Speaker 1: I remember in researching willpower and how willpower works, and

1139
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: it in its state at status, is this kind of

1140
01:04:36,960 --> 01:04:40,200
Speaker 1: depletable resource in the human mind. You end up thinking

1141
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:42,800
Speaker 1: about video games. It's the logical way to make sense

1142
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:45,640
Speaker 1: of that and to picture it. Yeah, so some media

1143
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,640
Speaker 1: coverage about exactly the kind of thing you're talking about

1144
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:51,400
Speaker 1: the intersection of of science and video games is of

1145
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: course not so sensible. And and as we've said, this

1146
01:04:55,120 --> 01:04:59,280
Speaker 1: example is no exception. In response to the game transfer phenomenon,

1147
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 1: I know UK newspaper ran the headline gamers can't tell

1148
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:08,320
Speaker 1: real world from fantasy, and generally much coverage has focused

1149
01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:12,120
Speaker 1: on sensational, violent implications of this kind of faulty premise.

1150
01:05:12,160 --> 01:05:16,120
Speaker 1: The researchers themselves disown that kind of coverage. They're like, no,

1151
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: that's not what we're saying. Almost all of this is harmless,

1152
01:05:19,600 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 1: and they sort of they compare it to the ways

1153
01:05:21,720 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 1: we incorporate other metaphors from other types of content and

1154
01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:28,040
Speaker 1: media we consume into our lives. I mean, it's just

1155
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 1: you could express things in terms of a TV show

1156
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:34,480
Speaker 1: you watched or a book you read. When you participate

1157
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 1: with media, you you get some metaphors or some uh

1158
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:41,800
Speaker 1: you know, cognitive sticking points from it. Yeah, Like it's

1159
01:05:41,880 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 1: not that weird. Yeah, Like I think of any other

1160
01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:46,840
Speaker 1: phrases that we have, you know, fast forwarding through something again,

1161
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:50,560
Speaker 1: pot something, or let's put a pin in this, which

1162
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:54,120
Speaker 1: of course indicates that the speaker likes to torture insects

1163
01:05:54,160 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 1: in the spare time. So keep that one in mind. Yeah,

1164
01:05:56,920 --> 01:06:01,720
Speaker 1: the the malevolent lepidopterist of your office. Yeah. So while

1165
01:06:02,040 --> 01:06:05,680
Speaker 1: the using the phrase achievement un locked or something isn't

1166
01:06:05,680 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 1: all that weird, I do still think the Tetris effect

1167
01:06:08,320 --> 01:06:12,600
Speaker 1: is remarkable and strange. The idea of these uh these

1168
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: consistent and nearly universal Tetris hallucinations and dreams, and that

1169
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:21,320
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, well, does the Tetris effect belong in

1170
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:25,760
Speaker 1: this category of game transfer phenomena or is it something unique,

1171
01:06:25,880 --> 01:06:28,760
Speaker 1: is it something on a separate at a different level.

1172
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:32,040
Speaker 1: Pretty much, I feel like it might be. And in

1173
01:06:33,040 --> 01:06:35,600
Speaker 1: the next episode that we that we're doing on Tetris,

1174
01:06:36,000 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 1: I think we'll see elements of that now. I've been

1175
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:43,240
Speaker 1: thinking about it in terms of Tetris being the purest

1176
01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:46,560
Speaker 1: form of the drug, and you can, certainly and maybe

1177
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 1: you should dilute the purity of that drug when you're

1178
01:06:50,400 --> 01:06:54,360
Speaker 1: applying it in certain scenarios, right, because, like spice, it

1179
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:58,400
Speaker 1: may enable you to to have some precognition and to

1180
01:06:58,520 --> 01:07:00,840
Speaker 1: stand at the top of the dune of the universe

1181
01:07:00,840 --> 01:07:04,320
Speaker 1: of space time and see beyond what normal humans can.

1182
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:08,160
Speaker 1: But you've got to keep coming back. Oh man, I

1183
01:07:08,200 --> 01:07:11,200
Speaker 1: wonder how spice would affect your ability to play Tetris, Like,

1184
01:07:11,200 --> 01:07:16,320
Speaker 1: what would you see the entire bag your preview screen

1185
01:07:16,360 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: would have hundreds of blocks in it, and then what

1186
01:07:20,320 --> 01:07:22,880
Speaker 1: what well the guild navigator, of course would you would

1187
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:26,000
Speaker 1: would make sure to pick the best block possible for

1188
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:29,160
Speaker 1: the next turn, whatever the safest block choices. But as

1189
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: we've showed, there is no such thing. There is no

1190
01:07:32,120 --> 01:07:35,320
Speaker 1: optimal Tetris play. There there's better and worse Tetris play,

1191
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:38,400
Speaker 1: but there's no perfect Tetris play. So would you be

1192
01:07:38,480 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: able to find that golden path and through Tetris? You couldn't,

1193
01:07:42,480 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: I guess an unsolved game. Yeah. Anyway, we are so

1194
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:49,960
Speaker 1: excited about the science of Tetris that we're going to

1195
01:07:50,040 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 1: come back next time to talk about some very fascinating

1196
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:57,400
Speaker 1: Tetris research, more about how Tetris interacts with our brains.

1197
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about why Tetris feels so good

1198
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 1: to play, but we're also going to talk about Tetris

1199
01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 1: based therapies for the Tetris cure. Essentially. Yeah, so we're

1200
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:11,240
Speaker 1: going to continue to dive into the power of Tetris.

1201
01:08:11,280 --> 01:08:13,200
Speaker 1: But then what can we do with that power? How

1202
01:08:13,240 --> 01:08:16,160
Speaker 1: can we utilize it? How can we harness Tetris and

1203
01:08:16,320 --> 01:08:18,880
Speaker 1: use it to improve our lives? In the meantime, if

1204
01:08:19,000 --> 01:08:21,680
Speaker 1: you haven't played Tetris in a while, I encourage you

1205
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:26,400
Speaker 1: to unlock that ancient secret yet again, open the puzzle box,

1206
01:08:26,640 --> 01:08:28,720
Speaker 1: play a little bit of Tetris, and then come back

1207
01:08:28,760 --> 01:08:32,040
Speaker 1: and visit with us again next time and and share

1208
01:08:32,280 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 1: in the deep mystery and wonder of the Platonic puzzle

1209
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 1: universe with us, So until next time, check out stuff

1210
01:08:39,280 --> 01:08:41,160
Speaker 1: to blow your mind dot com. That's where we find

1211
01:08:41,640 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: all of our blog posts are podcast episodes are videos,

1212
01:08:45,280 --> 01:08:48,080
Speaker 1: and indeed the landing page for this episode will include

1213
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:50,880
Speaker 1: links out through some related materials on the site as

1214
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 1: well as some of the resources we've been discussing here

1215
01:08:53,200 --> 01:08:54,880
Speaker 1: with you today. And if you want to get in

1216
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,320
Speaker 1: touch with us and let us know your personal Tetris

1217
01:08:57,400 --> 01:09:02,080
Speaker 1: history or your thoughts about cognition, human neurology and in

1218
01:09:02,200 --> 01:09:05,160
Speaker 1: video gameplay, you can email us at blow the Mind

1219
01:09:05,200 --> 01:09:17,160
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this

1220
01:09:17,400 --> 01:09:19,880
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works

1221
01:09:19,920 --> 01:09:26,960
Speaker 1: dot com. The