Comments on: BBC Future column: The Psychology Of Tetris

By: therealsomini

therealsomini — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 01:08:52 +0000

That video is not shared enough. Simply brilliant!

By: Bru

Bru — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 23:29:00 +0000

Nice article, but I have a nitpick

Snooker is not pool. They use different rules, balls, cues, and tables.

Sorry, just that “deep-seated psychological drive to tidy up” kicking in.

By: jonolmsted

jonolmsted — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:54:27 +0000

One explanation of the compelling nature of Tetris is in the statement above that it is constantly creating a question and a quick answer. Wolfram Shulz and others discovered that the brain predicts constantly. The prediction of reward spikes dopamine. When a prediction is wrong it too spikes dopamine and attention and significance. So you are getting constant anticipation, lots of unpredictability and intermitent reinforcement of reward (when the block goes in right). You are in the thralls of a dopamine pump – not too unlike a slot machine.

By: Nolly

Nolly — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:41:42 +0000

And then there’s this example of how much Tetris has penetrated our psyches:

Russian history, Tetris-style

By: KN

KN — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:11:45 +0000

Tetris has also had significant effect on psychological theory, particularly in showing how actions are used for cognition, via the paper “on distinguishing epistemic and pragmatic action”, by Kirsh and Maglio.

By: nancylebovitz

nancylebovitz — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:24:50 +0000

I think Tetris combines the pleasure of getting things to fit exactly with the pleasure of dropping things from a great height in a way which isn’t possible in the real world.

I don’t see tetris in the outside world, but if I play a lot of a game, I can get game sequences (not whole games) appearing when I close my eyes. This applies to Zuma Delux as well as Tetris.

By: markps2

markps2 — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:04:12 +0000

“My conclusion? It’s to do with a deep-seated psychological drive to tidy up.”

Making order out of disorder.

But nature is inherently messy. The storm off the east coast of North America is going to make things messy.

Things are going to be fixed, insurance claims are going to be filed.

You could claim it is purposeless to clean up, another storm is going to come next year.
But people are going to clean up and rebuild.

You look at the Tetris game like it is an enemy “uses it (the mind’s basic pleasure in tidying up) against us”.

The game is just an entertainment. The thing you are fighting ( you enjoy pleasure) is yourself.