Alexey Pajitnov

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born April 16, 1955) is a Russian and American computer engineer and video game designer.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pajitnov moved to the United States and became a U.S. citizen. In 1996, he founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Despite the game's high popularity, Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time.

Early life Pajitnov was born on April 16, 1955, in Moscow, to Russian parents who were both writers. His father was an art critic and his mother was a journalist who wrote for both newspapers and a film magazine. It was through his parents that Pajitnov gained exposure to the arts, eventually developing a passion for cinema. He accompanied his mother to many film screenings, including the Moscow Film Festival. Pajitnov was also mathematically inclined, enjoying puzzles and problem solving.

In 1967, when he was 11 years old, Pajitnov's parents divorced. For several years, he lived with his mother in a one-bedroom apartment owned by the state. The two were eventually able to move into a private apartment at 49 Gertsen Street, when Pajitnov was 17. He later went on to study applied mathematics at the Moscow State University.

Career In 1977, Pajitnov worked as a summer intern at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Once he graduated in 1979, he accepted a job there working on speech recognition at the academy's Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre. When the Computing Centre received new equipment, its researchers would write a small program for it in order to test its computing capabilities. According to Pajitnov, this "became [his] excuse for making games". Computer games were fascinating to him because they offered a way to bridge the gap between logic and emotion, and Pajitnov held interests in both mathematics and puzzles, as well as the psychology of computing. Using an Electronika 60 in the Computing Centre, he began working on what would become the first version of Tetris. Building the first prototype in two weeks, This primitive version did not have levels or a scoring system, but Pajitnov knew he had a potentially great game, since he could not stop playing it at work.

The game attracted the interest of coworkers like fellow programmer Dmitri Pevlovsky, who helped Pajitnov connect with Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old intern at the Soviet Academy. Pajitnov wanted to make a color version of Tetris for the IBM Personal Computer, and enlisted the intern to help. Gerasimov created the PC version in less than three weeks, and with contributions from Pevlovsky, spent an additional month adding new features like scorekeeping and sound effects.

Pajitnov created a sequel to Tetris, entitled Welltris, which has the same principle, but in a three-dimensional environment where the player sees the playing area from above.

Tetris was licensed and managed by Soviet company ELORG, which had a monopoly on the import and export of computer hardware and software in the Soviet Union, and advertised with the slogan "From Russia with Love" (on NES: "From Russia with Fun!"). Because he was employed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Pajitnov did not receive royalties.

Pajitnov, together with Vladimir Pokhilko, moved to the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 1996 founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers, which, in combination with the rights reverting to him in 1995 or 1996, finally allowed him to collect royalties from his game. He helped design the puzzles in the Super NES versions of Yoshi's Cookie and designed the game Pandora's Box, which incorporates more traditional jigsaw-style puzzles. Pajitnov and Pokhilko founded the 3D software technology company AnimaTek, which developed the game / screensaver El-Fish.

He was employed by Microsoft from October 1996 until 2005. While there, he worked on the Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection, MSN Mind Aerobics and MSN Games groups. Pajitnov's new, enhanced version of Hexic, Hexic HD, was included with every new Xbox 360 Premium package.

In August 2005, WildSnake Software announced that Pajitnov would be collaborating with them to release a new line of puzzle games.

Personal life Pajitnov moved to the United States in 1991, was naturalized as a U.S. citizen and now lives in Clyde Hill, Washington. He and his wife, Nina, have two sons.

Political views After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Pajitnov issued a statement condemning the war and stating that he was "sure that Putin and his hateful regime will fall down and the normal peaceful way of living will be restored in Ukraine and, hopefully, in Russia".

Games Title Year Platforms Roles Tetris 1985 Electronika 60, IBM PC Concept, with Vadim Gerasimov & Dmitry PavlovskyMuddle 1989Electronika 60, IBM PCDesign Welltris 1989 Amiga, Atari ST, C64, MS-DOS, Mac, ZX Spectrum Design, with Andrei Sgenov Faces 1990 Amiga, MS-DOS, Mac Concept, with Vladimir Pokhilko Hatris 1990 TurboGrafx-16, arcade, Game Boy, NES Concept Knight Move 1990 Famicom Disk System Design Wordtris 1991 MS-DOS, Game Boy, Mac, SNES, Design Yoshi's Cookie 1992 NES, Game Boy, SNES Puzzle design El-Fish 1993 MS-DOS Concept, with Vladimir Pokhilko Knight Moves 1995 Windows Idealist Ice & Fire 1995 Windows, Mac Concept, with Vladimir Pokhilko Tetrisphere 1997 Nintendo 64 Contributor Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection 1997 Windows, Game Boy Color Design Microsoft Pandora's Box 1999 Windows Design Microsoft A.I. Puzzler 2001 Windows Design Hexic 2003 Windows Concept and design Hexic HD 2005 Xbox 360 Concept and design Dwice 2006 Windows Design Hexic 2 2007 Xbox 360 Design Marbly 2013 iOS Concept and design

Awards and recognition In 1996, GameSpot named him as the fourth most influential computer game developer of all time. In March 2007, he received the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award. The award was given for pioneering the casual games market.

In June 2009, he received the honorary award at the LARA - Der Deutsche Games Award in Cologne, Germany. In 2012, IGN included Pajitnov on their list of 5 Memorable Video Game Industry One-Hit Wonders, calling him "the ultimate video game one-hit wonder." In 2015, Pajitnov won the Bizkaia Award at the Fun & Serious Game Festival.

Pajitnov was portrayed by Russian actor Nikita Yefremov in the 2023 movie Tetris, a dramatised retelling of the licensing bidding war for Tetris in the late 1980s.