The Tetris Effect: The Cold War Battle for the World's Most Addictive Game

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Description

February 21, 1989. A self-made software magnate with a street hustler's flair, the privileged son of a hard-charging media mogul and a globe-trotting game programmer land in Moscow within hours of each other. Their goal To undercut one another and strike a deal with the Soviets for the most lucrative piece of intellectual property to ever escape from behind the Iron Curtain - the rights to the game Tetris. Technology reporter Dan Ackerman brings us the gripping tale behind a game so addictive that scientists termed it the world's first 'pharmatronic'. Combining elements of a fast-paced cold war thriller with corporate espionage, courtroom drama and international conspiracies, The Tetris Effect is also the story of a one-in-a-million software startup, a unique example of an idea, a product, and an era coming together at exactly the right moment. Tetris was perfectly (if accidentally) crafted to hit primal triggers of human experience and in Ackerman's hands it becomes unputdownable once again.

Reviews

'The definitive telling of one of the most fascinating stories in videogame history.'

-- Wired

Agreat read on a game that has hypnotized my brain and probably yours too.

-- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple

'From its launch in 1984 [Tetris] created a generation of gamers drawn by its irresistible block-stacking brilliance...The story of its conception is just as addictive; think courtroom dramas and global intrigue, all relayed in Ackerman's bewitchingprose'.

* Monocle *

'Fascinating'

* Sunday Herald *

How [Tetris] came to the West is a remarkably complicated cloak-and-dagger storyThe Tetris Effect is full of fascinating facts.

* Spectator *

The Tetris Effect is a page-turning, block-stacking, globe-trotting thriller/history book, covering the epic creation saga of one of the greatest video games ever made or played.

-- Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One

The Tetris Effect explains how one guy in Russia with one little game ended up creating a global business and cultural phenomenon... Ackerman tells the story of the first and quintessential start-up.

-- Douglas Rushkoff

Tetris broke social, cultural and technological boundaries in a way that nobody, including the meek Russian researcher who designed the game, could have predicted. Ackerman pieces the story together with flair and diligence in a brilliant account of the video game that everybody from the Soviet government to Japanese moguls wanted for their own.

-- Simon Parkin, author of Death by Video Game and contributing writer, New Yorker.com

The author provides a meticulous accounting of the rise of TetrisFor those fascinated with the way video games are created and intrigued by the history of early computers, the book will provide great entertainment, just like the gameAn all-inclusive history behind one of the most popular video games ever.

* Kirkus Reviews *

Ackerman doles out intrigue worthy of Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy. Its a behind-the-Iron Curtain nail-biter.

* LA Review of Books *

Author Bio

Dan Ackerman is a section editor at leading technology news site CNET. He regularly appears as a technology correspondent on major news outlets including CNN, the BBC and CBS where he is CBS This Morning's in-house technology expert. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.