One of the inventors of the revolutionary video game Tetris has taken up residence at Google Australia, where he is now working to reinvent online communications.
Vadim Gerasimov was just 15 when he was taken under the wing of two Russian computer engineers - Alexey Pajitnov and Dmitry
Pavlovsky - at the Moscow Academy of Sciences and helped them create Tetris.
The game, which celebrates its 25th birthday tomorrow, is widely regarded as one of the greatest video games ever created. It has sold over 70 million copies globally and is still played today on current-generation games consoles, mobile phones and social networking sites.
In 1995, a group of Dutch students entered the record books by creating the world's largest fully functional game of Tetris, which covered the side of a 15 floor university building.
Big game companies - most notably Nintendo, which bundled it with every Game Boy - have made millions from Tetris but Gerasimov, who ported the game to the PC platform and developed parts of the code, revealed in an interview today that all he got was "a TV set and VCR".
He said commercialising Tetris was impossible in the communist Soviet Union, where the lack of intellectual property rights meant he was not entitled to royalties. The Academy of Sciences owned everything he made, so the game was initially distributed free - a key reason why it spread so quickly.
"I was 15 at the time, I wasn't particularly interested in the business aspect," said Gerasimov.
Gerasimov was reluctant to go into further details but in an article published on his website he claims he was hoodwinked by Pajitnov, who attempted to profit from Tetris several years later with the American entrepreneur, Hank Rogers.
"Pajitnov stopped by my home and asked me to urgently sign a paper 'to get lots of money for us from game companies'," Gerasimov wrote.
The paper stated Gerasimov agreed to give Pajitnov the right to handle all business arrangements and give up the rights to any rewards related to Tetris.
"In a few months my name disappeared from all newly released versions of Tetris and all Tetris-related documents," he wrote.
But today, Gerasimov did not appear bitter. He was proud that a game he helped create is still being enjoyed by people a quarter of a century later.
The secret to Tetris's success was its simplicity, and the fact that the game is impossible to win, Gerasimov said.
"The game really resonates with a lot of people - it's very easy to learn and very fun to play," he said.
In Tetris, several differently-shaped blocks fall from the top of the screen and players can move and turn each block as it is falling.
Once blocks are in place they can't be moved, and the aim is to make them disappear by creating rows of horizontal blocks with no gaps. The longer the player survives the faster the blocks come down, with the game ending once the blocks pile up to the top of the screen and overwhelm the player.
Gerasimov helped to develop about a dozen other games while working part-time at the Moscow Academy of Sciences, but he admits that "they were not nearly as successful as Tetris". He viewed the work as more of a hobby while he studied applied mathematics at Moscow University.
Gerasimov moved to the US in 1994 to study a PhD in media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.
He conducted much research on "inertial sensors" like accelerometers, which are now standard features on mobile phones like the iPhone. He also researched and developed health monitoring technology that was fun to use - for instance, a game of Tetris paced by your heart rate.
Since around 2003 Gerasimov has lived in Australia, where he worked in complex systems research with the CSIRO before joining Google about a year and a half ago.
His main project at Google is Google Wave, which was announced globally last month. Wave aims to revolutionise online communications by combining email, instant messaging and document-, maps- image- and video-sharing.
As for video games, all Gerasimov has time for these days is Mario Kart on the Nintendo Wii and the PC game Civilisation, which he plays with his 9- and 15-year-old children.
Tetris inventor joins Google Australia
Originally Posted by woshiibreak
but im wrong 