The Odd Origin Story of TETRIS скачать в хорошем качестве

The Odd Origin Story of TETRIS

Alexey Pajitnov was supposed to build voice recognition software for the Russian government. Instead, he built a video game and gave it away. Listen to this Podcast wherever you prefer! Episode: #112: Tetris – Digital Anxiety or Awesome Game? https://theempirebuilderspodcast.com/... Book your 90 Minute Starter Session Here: https://theempirebuilderspodcast.com/... Timestamps: Podcast: (0:00) Sponsored Segment: (6:59) Podcast: (7:44) Outro: (12:55) Transcript: Dave Young: Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, Dave Young, here alongside Stephen Semple. And Stephen just whispered in my ear that our empire today that we’re going to talk about is Tetris, or as I like to call it, instant anxiety. Stephen Semple: So you’re familiar with the game. Dave Young: I’ve played a few times, and man, does it give me anxiety. Stephen Semple: Really, Dave. Dave Young: It’s just like, oh, it’s just like, oh, the pressure, and it’s building and it’s building and it’s like that’s just the way my life is, and I don’t need a game to remind me. Stephen Semple: You may feel differently about it after you hear the story, because it’s a kind of cool story. Dave Young: I have a distant hunch of a memory in my mind that it has something to do with Russia. Stephen Semple: It does. Well done. The story starts behind the Iron Curtain. Dave Young: Yeah. Soviet Russia. Stephen Semple: Russia, yeah. But to give an idea of how big Tetris is, to date it’s estimated that there has been 500 million copies sold. Dave Young: 500 million copies sold. I wonder how many billions of games of Tetris have been played. Stephen Semple: Oh God, you’d only have to each game- Dave Young: Trillions. Stephen Semple: Yeah, well, exactly. Because you think about, with 500 million copies out there, if everybody just played it twice, there you’re at a billion. Dave Young: Yeah. Stephen Semple: You get there really quickly. Like your two games, Dave, that’ll put you there. Dave Young: Yeah. Yeah. Stephen Semple: So where it starts is we got to go back to 1984, and we have to remember what it was like in ’84. It was the Cold War. Dave Young: Oh my gosh. Stephen Semple: And communism was a real thing. It’s easy to forget that at that time in the Soviet Union, all production was owned and controlled by the state, and the economy was completely centrally planned. It’s hard to remember what that was like and the government made all decisions about what to make, how much to make, what price to sell goods and services at. Dave Young: Yeah, and from a geopolitical point of view, we were in the middle of the Cold War and Star Wars, Ronald Reagan’s hand tie ballistic missile, we were going to spend a gazillion dollars to- Stephen Semple: Yeah. Dave Young: Yeah. It was crazy times. Stephen Semple: And the wall was a real thing that if you climbed over- Dave Young: It was still there- Stephen Semple: You got shot. It’s almost hard to believe and private property was not allowed, and all citizens were expected to work for the quote, unquote common good. Dave Young: And Vladimir Putin was a young guy working his way up in the KGB. Stephen Semple: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. We almost need to remember that just to understand how remarkable this story is, because here’s this guy, Alexey Pajitnov, who’s working at the Moscow Academy of Science, which of course is state run, and he’s a computer genius, and he’s working on an early form of voice recognition technology. Dave Young: Oh, okay. Stephen Semple: Yeah, and the KGB learns about this, and they’re really interested because they want to use this for wire taps. To read more visit: https://theempirebuilderspodcast.com/...