Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, has been trying to perfect multiplayer for his popular puzzle game.
“We are working on multiplayer versions for more than 10 years — I’ve been trying to design it. I should admit that we are not quite there yet,” says Pajitnov tells Gamasutra in an interview.
What’s holding it back from being finished relates to how people play Tetris in single player mode. You usually want to play at a high level to challenge yourself. Unfortunately that leaves little brain resources to focus on what your opponent would be doing in multiplayer.
“That’s the kind of measured theoretical problem which we need to resolve with multiplayer Tetris. So, if we lower the intensity of personal game playing, we, a little bit, lower the excitement of the game,” he explains. “But if we keep it at the same level, the players don’t have resources to really do some kind of multiplayer actions, to observe, to analyze what’s going on in the big picture, and adjust their strategy.”
While they’re still stuck, Pajitnov says that they version they have now is “pretty good.” I bet it’s really good after spending that much time on it.
