Tag Archives: Henk Rogers

“I like to compare it to a sport, in the beginning it’s an activity, like golf was an activity, then it became a sport. I think once people have played it more than 20 or 25 years you can say it’s here to stay, it’s a sport, it’s no longer a fad. Angry Birds is cute and everybody plays it for a while but they get burned out and move on and they will play another game. But Tetris is like Happy Birthday, it keeps on going. Everybody else has games that come and go, they make the hit parade, but these are all temporary. You have to work really hard to get your unknown game to be #1, but when we re-released Tetris it became #1 even though we didn’t do any marketing. We have an unfair advantage, I gotta say. I’d rather have the goose that lays the golden egg.” – Tetris Company’s manager Henk Rogers to IndustryGamers.

EA’s announced that Tetris has been downloaded for mobiles over 100 million times since 2005.

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Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and founding partner Henk Rogers were at E3 last week, and while having a bit of a chat with Kotaku about the future of the classic puzzler, Rogers revealed that he would like to see the title become more than just a game.

The latest iteration of the series is a six-person multiplayer experience being tested in Korea, using the tried-and-true formula along with new attack and defense items.

“That’s an interesting evolution of Tetris,” Rogers told the site “The future is a country that has 48 million people living in it and the biggest casual gaming site in the country has 24 million registered users. That country is Korea. That’s what’s going to happen in the rest of the world.

“We are going to turn Tetris into the first real virtual sport. Sports like baseball and football were created at a time when our future was a lifetime of physical activities and physical fitness. But now that’s not as important, it’s more about mental fitness today.

“Tetris is a virtual sport that exercises the mind. That is the definition of a virtual sport.”

More through the link.