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Tetris Analysis

Page history last edited by Richard Chen 14 years, 4 months ago

Release Date: June 6, 1984

Genre: Puzzle

Developer: Alexey Pajitnov

Platforms: Game Boy, Mac, NES, PC, numerous others

 

Description

“Tetris is a game involving dropping blocks.  Points are scored for each block which comes to rest on the gradually collecting pile of blocks. Different blocks in different orientations score different points. The goal is to prevent the pile from reaching the top and ending the game. Whenever a row of blocks is completely filled, it is removed and all blocks above it drop down to fill the empty row.” – Artizia.com

 

Game Walkthrough

A random sequence of tetrominoes (sometimes called "tetrads" in older versions)—shapes composed of four square blocks each—fall down the playing field (a rectangular vertical shaft, called the "well" or "matrix"). The object of the game is to manipulate these tetrominoes, by moving each one sideways and rotating it by 90 degree units, with the aim of creating a horizontal line of blocks without gaps. When such a line is created, it disappears, and any block above the deleted line will fall. As the game progresses, the tetrominoes fall faster, and the game ends when the stack of tetrominoes reaches the top of the playing field and no new tetrominoes are able to enter.

 

Playthrough

 

Game Objectives

  • Complete levels by clearing a set number of lines
  • Clear lines to stop stack from reaching top of screen
  • Clear more lines at once for higher point values

 

Motivational Elements

Increasing difficulty

As players complete more levels, the difficulty of the game increases.  Not only do players keep the lines that they did not clear from the previous levels, but pieces also begin to fall faster, forcing the player to think faster in order to clear lines.  In the video below, you can see how the difficulty increases as the player continues to reach new levels. 

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High Scores

     The high score is costantly shown in the top right of the screen

Players are motivated to beat their own and their friends’ highs scores.  As players progress through levels and find new ways to clear lines, their point totals continue to increase.  Players are constantly reminded of top scores as most versions of Tetris include a “Top” point value (in the top right of the screen as shown above). 

 

Line clearing strategy

     A player who is about to complete a "tetris"

As players continue playing Tetris, they soon find that clearing more lines with one piece grants them more points.  For example, clearing one line in level one gives 40 points, two lines give 100 points, three lines give 300, and clearing four lines or completing a “tetris” gives 1200 points.  These point values are then multiplied by the level number plus one (n+1). 

 

 

Learning Objectives

  • Recognize spatial requirements to clear lines by rotating and dropping pieces
  • Plan ahead by setting up lines for easy clearing
  • Adapt to faster falling pieces

 

Educational Outcomes

Tetris has been one the most recognized and enjoyed video games since its creation 25 years ago.  Even today the game still enjoys popularity as it has gained new interest through platforms such as the iPhone and Facebook.  Because of its extensive social influences, many researchers have attempted measure the effects of Tetris, each with varying results.  

 

Spatial ability is the first area of learning that most people would point to improvement.  However in two experiments conducted by Valerie Sims and Richard Mayer (Link), researchers found that spatial expertise is highly-domain specific.  The experiment compared skilled Tetris players, non-Tetris players, and participants who played Tetris for 12 hours. Researchers discovered that Tetris players perform better in spatial ability than non-Tetris players when using identical or similar shapes to Tetris pieces.  Tetris players were able to mentally place these shapes faster and often rotated the shapes in alternative ways.  However, Tetris and non-Tetris players displayed little difference when performing spatial ability tests with non-Tetris shapes. 

 

Researchers at the Mind Research Network (Link) discovered differing results.  Over a three-month period, researchers studied two groups of adolescent girls, one group consistently played Tetris while the other did not.  After analyzing the girls’ MRIs after three months, researchers found that the girls who played Tetris displayed changes in their cortex.  The increase in cortical thickness is correlated with an increase in grey matter, which leads to greater brain efficiency when completing complex tasks. 

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