Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Existentialism & Culture

Tetris: A Game of the Absurd

Robert Harries says that playing this game is a Sisyphean task, and represents the human spirit up against a meaningless fate.

In 1984 in the former Soviet Union, a computer engineer by the name of Alexey Pajitnov created the mega-selling computer game, Tetris. Its format, known to everyone who has ever played a games consol, is a simple game of logic and reaction where you place randomly-shaped falling Tetriminoes (connected sets of four blocks) in a shaft with the objective of completing single or multiple horizontal lines. The lines disappear and as the game goes on, usually the speed in which the pieces fall increases, making it harder to place the pieces accurately, cutting down on vital time for strategic decision-making on where to place the next piece. The replay value is the obsession to beat your previous best. There is no authority stating that this is the objective of the game – however, a high scores board is the only indication of its purpose.

…