Angus McCullough: To compare Tetris to any other game is somehow wrong -- it is a masterful test of how our brains function while trying to balance instinctual and intellectual challenges in real time. The major difference between Tetris and other games is the simplicity of its construction and complexity of play. Most importantly, it is a game that does not have a goal or end. There is no castle to storm or high score to achieve -- the only way to end your game is to lose. Instead of building up, every time a line is completed it disappears.
John Bird and John Fortune: They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.
Sarah Silverman: You're very free if you don't love money.
McCullough: The way to become a Confucian gentleman is through mastery of ritual, training your instinct to work with your mind.
Ben Bernanke: When you are working, studying, or pursuing a hobby, do you sometimes become so engrossed in what you are doing that you totally lose track of time? That feeling is called flow. If you never have that feeling, you should find some new activities.
Xunzi: When one has grasped Virtue, then one can achieve fixity. When one can achieve fixity, then one can respond to things. To be capable both of fixity and of responding to things -- such a one is called the perfected person.
McCullough: With practice, you can simply put the pieces where you desire, and be sure that they are filling in the right spaces. In many ways, the ideal of Tetris is to continually return to this first frame, where the simplicity of the game is truly represented. The fact that emptiness is the goal connects with Xunzi's saying about clearing away murkiness to be able to see. Tetris, in its highest and purest form, is about learning how to fail. Even if you spend your whole life working at the game and playing at a high level, you will inevitably reach a moment of failure in every single game. This is, I think, the greatest lesson that the game can impart.
Return to Nothingness | 
