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When Box Brown started working on Tetris: The Games People Play, it took some time for the pieces to fall into place.
That's hardly surprising. The new graphic novel, released today by Macmillan imprint First Second, is an ambitious investigation into the history of the titular game that goes far beyond its creation by Russian software designer Alexey Pajitnov in the early 1980s. It also includes a brief history of Nintendo, a business lesson or several about foreign licensing, an economics class with particular attention paid to international currency and the Soviet Union, and a philosophical examination into the importance of game-playing as a societal construct.
With all that in mind, it's no surprise that Brown—the cartoonist behind the New York Times-bestselling biography André the Giant: Life and Legend—needed a roadmap to keep the various players in the book straight. So he created one.
The family tree he made features all the major figures in the journey of Tetris, including some people you might be surprised to see on there. (Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Maxwell, anyone?) The Institute of Computer Science at Budapest and the entire country of Russia both also make appearances despite not being active players, per se.
"I got the idea to create this when I was first researching Tetris," Brown says. "[Tetris Company founder] Henk Rogers called the Tetris copyright a family tree of how the game came into being. It was really helpful in getting to know the characters and provided me a visual aid in remembering who is who in such a complicated story with an ensemble cast."
Check out the chart he made above. However, if you want to find out how the many people (and locations) contributed—or not, as the case may be—to the success of Tetris you'll have to read the book. Tetris: The Games People Play is available today.
