It's one of the most beloved video games in history. And the true story of Tetris so closely resembles a Cold War spy thriller that Hollywood actually made a movie about it. At the center of that story is Henk Rogers — the man who ventured behind the Iron Curtain to meet the game's inventor, and negotiated a deal with the Soviet government to bring Tetris to Japan and the rest of the world.
After seeing his life on the big screen condensed into two hours, Rogers realized he wanted to tell more of the story. In his book, The Perfect Game: Tetris, from Russia with Love, he does just that.
Rogers came to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to launch his new book and sign autographs in the middle of a trade show floor lined with game demo booths. It was a fitting backdrop for a story that began in a similar convention hall in 1988. That's where our interview begins. The edited transcript follows.
Discovering Tetris
When you saw the idea that was Tetris, it was at (the Consumer Electronics Show). What drew you to this simple game amid all those flashing lights?
Henk Rogers: My job at the time, I had a company in Japan, I was a publisher. And I would go to trade shows, go from machine to machine and look for games to bring to Japan. When I found myself standing in the line for the Tetris machine for the fourth time, I realized I was hooked on this game. I mean, like, how can you get hooked on a game that quickly? Every other game is like trying to make a judgment: Is this going to be a fun game? And you're taking a glimpse of a massive game. And this one I saw the whole thing right there, beginning to end. And I followed my instinct. My instinct is that simple doesn't mean uninteresting. To me, it's a big plus. It means more people can play.
But other people were passing on this game, right? And and you saw something in it.
Digital Originals
Henk Rogers: The biggest software company in Japan at the time, that was ASCII... And ASCII looked at Tetris and they passed, because they said, and this is 1988, that the game was too retro. Ha, I love it! It's too retro in 1988! Guess what? Tetris is still here, and ASCII is gone.
Retro gaming is having a moment right now. What do you make of that?
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Henk Rogers: Yeah, I think it's great. You know, what that means is that it's about the game. It's how the game is played. And when you boil away all of the fancy graphics and the 3D environments and all that, then it's still down to the game! If the game has good gameplay, the graphics and the sound really don't matter that much. It's the game, stupid!
Tetris on Game Boy
What was it like when you saw the first prototype Game Boy?
Henk Rogers: In the movie, it's like, "Ohhhhh!" You know, like that? Ehh. You know, it wasn't color... It was fine. I mean, it was like... A portable device that you could play games anywhere. That was the big deal. And then be able to change the cartridges, so you could have multiple games? Oh, that was magic! I said, you know, Tetris is the perfect game for Game Boy. Why? The screen is tiny. And it's black and white. So you need objects that are very easy to see. And Tetris has got the most easy-to-see objects of any game at that time. And by the way, everybody plays Tetris. It wasn't just the guys trying to prove themselves with their "Let's destroy something!" No, it was everybody. And it's because it's a constructive game. If you look at the world, construction beats destruction. The fact that we have all these cities around the world and all these cars and planes and all that — we outbuild the destruction. I think that's basic human nature, and that's, I think, part of why Tetris is so successful.
How did you learn to negotiate like that?
Henk Rogers: My father. My father was a salesman. He could sell you anything. And I watched him sell things to people all the time. And it was his personality. People liked him, and people wanted to do business with him. And so I learned that from him.
Tetris: The Movie
There was this movie about this chapter in your life. What was it like seeing yourself portrayed on film, and what did the movie get right?
Henk Rogers: What the movie got right was, it was definitely ballsy going into the Soviet Union. It's like going to North Korea today. You're not supposed to talk to anybody except your guide. And here I was as a "tourist," trying to get into places that I wasn't supposed to get into. So that part of it comes through in the movie. We, meaning Alexey and I, worked together and made sure that the Soviet part was really Soviet. For example, KGB agents did not need guns. You knew who they were, and you knew how dangerous they were. And so they didn't actually need guns, you're just like, oh my gosh, yes sir, whatever!
We heard stories about what it was like behind the Iron Curtain. What was it like getting to experience that?
Henk Rogers: To me, that whole experience was like going into a big prison. No color, no advertising, everybody being unhappy. My personality, I go in and I try to make friends, I'd try joke with the lady at the check-in counter of the hotel, whatever. Nothing worked. None of these people wanted to smile at me for any reason. And I was like, "Oh my God, where am I?" It was unimaginable. And it took a while for me to break through that barrier and find a friend, a real friend. And Alexei was my first real friend.
Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov
What was it like meeting (Alexey Pajitnov) and seeing the original version of this computer program?
Henk Rogers: So Alexey is, first of all, salt of the earth, really nice guy, friendly and soft-spoken. I mean, we couldn't be more different. I'm sort of like outgoing, I like rock, he likes classical music. I like to adventure, he like to plan things. He basically disagrees with me on most things. We had something in common, which is game design. We're both game designers. That's what brought us together, and it broke all of the other things that made us different. Game design, we understood.
Which one of you is better at Tetris, by the way?
Henk Rogers: I'm better at Tetris. Are you kidding me? He created it, but — he likes to say that there was a period of time when he was the best player in the world. And that's right after he created it, before he let anybody else play. Alexey and I are best friends. If we're in the same jurisdiction, like the same city, bottle of wine every other day. During COVID, I lived in Seattle. Oh, we drank a lot of wine.
Writing it all down
What made now the time to write about all of this?
Henk Rogers: First of all, my grandchildren are growing up so that they get to the point where they can read. And they have no idea how I got here. You know, my children don't even know. They grew through it, but they didn't know what dad was doing at the time. And this is a chance for me to tell them the story.
The Game Developers Conference
What is it like to be here at (the Game Developers Conference)?
Henk Rogers: This is nostalgia, because I went to GDC when it was actually just game designers. And we took over a hotel, and we played games all night. You know, seeing it today is like, wow, it's exploded. I did go once in between, and big companies had taken over. It was like (the) Nintendo booth, and all of these giant booths. Now it's back to mostly indie games and smaller developers, which is much more intimate.
I watched that happen. In 2019, Google had a booth and PlayStation had a booth, and now it's like all these indie games. So what do you make of that?
Henk Rogers:You know, I think that's healthy. I think it means more people are having more ideas. What I don't like about the industry is that they take a hit and they make it, and make it, and remake it, and remake it, and remake it. And it's like, come on, is this never having a new idea? And indie games are a chance for people to have new ideas, because they're different from the big hits.
Where do new ideas come from? Where do great game ideas come from?
Henk Rogers: This is what makes us human is we have ideas. We fantasize. We create worlds that don't exist. And that is never gonna stop. They're gonna get more and more interesting.
A lasting legacy
You're now in this next chapter of your life where you kind of want to give back to the planet, and by the way, the universe. How did that happen?
Henk Rogers: Okay, so a month after I sold my last company — I had a company making games for mobile phones, sold it for a bucket load of money, and a month later, I find myself in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital. What I didn't know was that I had 100% blockage of the widowmaker. That's the largest artery in your heart, and 95% of the people who have that happen to them die. So I was the lucky 5%, and in that ambulance I said, "No, I am not going, I still have stuff to do." And in the recovery room, I got to thinking about, like, so what did I mean by stuff?
And it came to me in the back of the newspaper in Hawaii. And it said, oh, by the way, we're going to kill all the coral in the world by the end of the century. And that's caused by ocean acidification, which is caused by carbon dioxide, which is caused by us. It's going to killed all the plankton. We're talking about the basis of the food chain in the ocean. And that's like, no, we are not allowed to do that. I lived on the beach for a year, surfing and diving. I cannot imagine a world where there is no coral. And so, ending the use of carbon-based fuels is like the most important thing that I think we can do. And it fixes climate change, by the way. You know, carbon dioxide is causing climate change.
If we have a 30-foot rise in sea level, which is how much we'll have if we melt Greenland, how many billions of people are gonna have to move? If you think we have a migration problem today? All of Bangladesh is gonna have move. New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Nagoya, Shanghai, Beijing, they all have to move. That is gonna cost way more money than fixing climate change, so let's just fix it. It's not that hard. We just have to switch to renewable energy.
In people who play games, there's this thing called the epic win. It's like, "Yes! I did it!" And they do whatever it takes to achieve that epic win. That's something we need to do for the planet. We need to have an epic win. The epic win is fixing climate change. That's the epic win. And we're all going to play this game.
If you have been successful in business somehow, it's because you're a little bit smarter than everybody else, somehow. I would like you to take your talent and your money and fix something that you think is broken about the world. What bugged you about the word when you were in high school? Just go and fix that. And then let that be your legacy.
