Response to “This Is Your Brain on Tetris”
People becoming addicted to Tetris is a common enough occurrence to where it’s turned into a well-known joke. In the article “This Is Your Brain on Tetris,” the writer tells of their own experience getting sucked into Tetris and outlines the explanation behind the phenomenon. It’s interesting to see a serious take on how Tetris hooks players into spending hours on playing.
In a quote from the article, former psychologist Vladimir Pokhilko gives us three psychological reasons as to why Tetris is so addicting — visual insight, unfinished action, and automatization. I found the second reason to be the most interesting to focus on. As Pokhilko says, “Tetris has many unfinished actions (that) force you to continue and make it very addictive.” While visual insight (immediate, observable feedback to player action) is something every game has, and automatization is present in some, how Tetris harnesses unfinished action seems the most unique to the game. In many other games, progress is up to the player. In platformers such as Super Mario Bros., the player has to press right and occasionally jump in order to continue the game. If they sit still, there might be a timer that runs out and ends the game, but nothing really happens within the game to urge them forward. In roleplaying games, the player has to actively explore areas, talk to NPCs, and engage enemies in combat. In Tetris, progress comes to you. The game is always moving, and pieces continue arriving consistently whether you’re ready for them or not. The player can take control of this progress to some extent by pressing down to make pieces arrive faster, but aside from that, the player can only react to the game’s actions instead of the other way around. Of course, the player could press pause if they really needed a break, but the endless nature of Tetris means there aren’t any natural stopping points within the game where the player can take a breather.
Automatization is interesting as well. It ties into that idea of flow — a state of concentration and satisfaction that a person experiences when performing an activity they enjoy. When a player enters a state of flow, they become absorbed in the task or “get into a groove” and easily lose track of time. This automatic sort of enjoyment coupled with the unending progress of Tetris are a powerful recipe for addictive play.
I also thought it was interesting how the game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov, compared an addiction to playing Tetris to music rather than a drug, as many other people have. If you’ve ever been addicted to a song, this makes perfect sense. When you fixate on a certain song, you might feel an intense need to listen to it again and end up listening putting it on repeat. It also gets stuck in your head whenever you’re not listening to it, and you may end up humming it as you walk to class, similar to how avid players of Tetris may try to mentally line up real-world objects while not playing. Like playing Tetris, getting a song stuck in your head isn’t inherently harmful, but it can be consuming (and annoying to others). It appeals to your emotions and your brain’s fondness for patterns. I think that makes it a much better comparison than drug use, which is inherently harmful and physically addicting.
