We're All* Connected
Edited by Kaile Hultner
Every essay about Tetris begins with an anecdote. The first time the author played it, how their relationship to it has changed, a particularly impactful version. Everyone has a Tetris story, some profound encounter with a puzzle game that seems to have existed before time. Tetris simply is in a way very few games ever have been. And like all unassailable delights it has been regurgitated, commodified, trademarked, and degraded by years of litigation and aggressive monetization models (in the year since the newest iOS version released it has already replaced its one-time purchase with microtransactions and a subscription service to remove ads). If there is a game which better embodies the con of neoliberal capitalist innovation I haven’t played it. (The irony of Tetris being created in Russia and then sublicensed to death abroad is not lost on me.)
Tetris’ most celebrated modern incarnation is Tetris Effect (Monstars/Resonair, 2018), which sets Tetris against a backdrop of Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez, Every Extend Extra) directed light shows and off-brand-Sia pop songs. Every drop, rotation, and line clear adds to the audio-visual hurricane as levels shift from firework shows to mountain expeditions, eventually zooming out to view the world in its totality. Tying these scenes together are new-age mantras and astrological narratives. It’s not just Tetris, it’s Tetris as a unifying force of nature, a tool for meditation, a way to connect our distant souls. It is also, as you might imagine, very cheesy.
For all its glitz and extravagant, desperate cries for sincerity, Tetris Effect feels wholly artificial. It is Tetris by way of Burning Man, an expensive exercise in manufactured emotional journeys that clumsily coopts eastern spiritualism to, as Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux write, “connect the repeating, ritual play of Tetris to a mythic state of nature.” The visuals are dazzling but empty, invoking ideas of something grander while erasing particularities. I see featureless human figures walking through deserts, worshiping a massive Tetris grid, sitting placid within the stars. There is a sense these people are real – or at least drawn from something real – but we will never know them. Their chants are consumed by Tetris the brand, Tetris the religion, Tetris a universe unto itself. In elevating itself to god status, Tetris Effect has made the world very small.
The initial shock and overstimulation feels like it should, like it has to mean something. I’m easily caught up in the moment, the percussive force of my movements, the particle effects burning down my graphics card. But just as quickly, it’s over. I break the surface to find - not an ocean, but my bathtub, the water already starting to chill.
I am not surprised Tetris Effect has been met with almost universal acclaim. It is a very good videogame, in that it does what we expect a videogame to do: make the graphics prettier, add more bullet points to the box, appeal to nostalgia while erasing history. And like the good videogame it is, there is nothing surprising about Tetris Effect. Tetris has been self-aggrandizing since at least The New Tetris (H2O Entertainment, 1999) – with players constructing famous human monuments from cleared lines, the forces of history goofily warped but nonetheless intact. It has been planet-hopping since Tetris Worlds (Blue Planet Software, 2001) – a race of sentient Tetriminos fleeing their home to escape the death of their star. Lumines (Q entertainment, 2004) and Chime (Zoë Mode, 2010) more effectively combined tetrominos with pop music a decade ago, utilizing licensed songs players might already have an emotional connection to. None of those supported VR, HDR, or 4K, but I’m sure they had very important acronyms of their own.
Tetris Effect exists as an inevitability. There must be a new Tetris game because Tetris Holding – current owners of the Tetris brand – have spent decades rewriting copyright law to prevent anyone else from so much as sneezing in the shape of a Tetrimino. The brand must continue, licenses must be dispersed, artists must be contracted to legitimize these DMCA takedowns. As isolating as Tetris Effect can feel it shares a lot in common with music festivals, employing the same exoticized garments, high production values, and vapid techno used to disguise the predatory contracts and corporate lobbying behind the curtain.
In an alternate timeline Tetris exists in the public domain. Glimpses of this world can be seen in Twinbeard’s Futilitris (2010), a Tetris-like wherein lines don’t clear and the board expands endlessly in every direction (now kept alive only by Flash game archivists). Or Mixolumia (Dave Makes, 2020), a music puzzler with extensive modding support which allows anyone with an audio file to make a soundtrack. Even more traditional fan games like Tetra Online – an attempt to create a streamlined, modern Tetris game which was DMCA’d last December – give an idea of the energy and creativity still surrounding Tetris decades post-release, all far more earnest and interesting than their corporate counterparts.
Tetris fan games still exist, of course. The internet is vast and Tetris is eternal. But like with fan work of Tetris’ frequent partner Nintendo, it exists under the constant threat of being shut down without recourse; an I-shaped Sword of Damocles waiting to fall if any of these projects extend beyond their isolated fandoms. Or, even more readily, any project that starts asking for money. We can have our passion projects and hobby games, but only if they eventually funnel back to Tetris proper.
Tetris Effect’s anthem – Hydelic’s "Connected (Yours Forever)" – proclaims that “we’re all connected in this life.” It is the soaring pop-epic swimming under every decision the game makes, the emotional keystone by which these particles and drumbeats gain meaning. But are we all connected? Who is we and what does that connection look like? The original game launched without multiplayer, but even with the new Tetris Effect: Connected I can’t play with my friends on different consoles; with anyone not subscribed to Xbox Live; anyone who can’t afford to spend $40 on a new Tetris game. These problems aren’t unique to Tetris Effect but they are emphasized by its contradictions, the obvious hypocrisy of technocratic universalism, platform exclusivity, and an original soundtrack of appropriated indigenous chants.
I am connected in Tetris Effect as I am through the tech monopolies breaking me into data points; the credit brokers deciding if I deserve a home; the spreadsheets that determine if I keep my job. Filters and numbers arbitrarily siphoning people away who don’t have the resources to get in the door. I watch the numbers go up and cannot begin to understand what they could mean or why they matter. Is this nirvana? What intimacy can 4K matchmaking systems create more meaningful than sharing a GameBoy in the backseat of a car? Capitalism won’t allow that experience to be enough. It can’t monetize a memory, a yellowed cartridge, the worm lights illuminating unlit and unconnected screens.
Any sincerity in Tetris Effect’s artistry has been sanded away for the sake of The Brand. You have the opportunity to connect but always at a price and on Tetris Holding’s terms. There is no room for deviance or collaboration, it has been all preordained by the Tetris guidebook detailing everything from the speed of play to the method of randomization to the button mappings across consoles. This has been Tetris Holding’s goal from inception: to control the idea of Tetris®, swatting down copycats and rewriting copyright law to manifest authenticity. This is the real Tetris because you paid for it, because it follows the rules. Tetris might have begun as shareware, but now it is property and it no longer belongs to us.
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