World’s biggest game of Tetris uses 2,000 drones in eSports final

GameCentral meets Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers at the Red Bull Tetris World Final, as they explain why ‘Tetris is always going to be here’.

There are few games in the world quite as stubbornly immortal as Tetris. For more than four decades, those falling tetrominoes have quietly lodged themselves into our collective consciousness, slipping into everything from handheld consoles to mobile phones. In the early 1990s it was the only arcade game at the Mexican bar I hung out at, and the jolly Russian theme tune was the soundtrack to my misspent youth. But despite its simplicity, or perhaps because of it, Tetris remains endlessly compelling, while constantly reinventing itself.

This weekend saw one of its most dramatic reincarnations yet, at the Red Bull Tetris World Final, staged at the huge and glittering Dubai Frame, which dwarfs the landscape of the Saudi city. It saw competitors from 60 countries battle for block-based supremacy, under a sky filled with thousands of choreographed drones for the biggest live competition of Tetris ever.

It’s a far cry, and a completely different climate, from where the game began. Tetris was born in 1984, in a Soviet computing lab, when Alexey Pajitnov transformed a pentomino puzzle into a hypnotic cascade of falling blocks. The game spread with viral intensity, leaping across borders long before digital distribution existed. It made the Game Boy a global phenomenon. It became a shorthand for order, chaos, and obsession, and it’s now a cultural artefact as much as it is a video game.

Like all cultural artefacts worth their salt, Tetris has refused to stay still. I spoke to Pajitnov at the event, about how the game came about and its evolution.

‘So in Russia, in the Soviet Union of the time, we didn’t have too much entertainment. So board games were a big part of our kind of entertainment. I’m not good at chess, but I’m okay with checkers and other small games, traditional small games. And I still feel board games are very important for young people’s education and elevation. I’m serious about that. But as far as computer game is concerned, I didn’t see a lot back then.

‘Later on, I was absolutely obsessed with the game called Lode Runner. It was my favourite for four decades. I say it’s my number one game, absolutely number one. And I put together several of my own games, because I was into puzzles, but Tetris was my first real-time game.’

Pajitnov is not directly involved in making the modern versions of Tetris, so I asked him which ones he liked the best.

‘I really respect the mobile version of the game. 500 million downloads is something, you know. As a historical kind of observer of my game, of course the Game Boy was a big deal.

‘I have heard of Tetris Effect, I did play it; I enjoyed, but it is quite different. It’s very good, but I played it once, I played it twice, I played three times, but no more, it’s not addictive. It is interesting, and if I come back to my PlayStation I will definitely play Tetris Effect, but my heart as a player is still in the computer version; I like my keys as a tool. I like my right hand to move and my left hand to drop, so that’s how I feel comfortable playing.’

Tetris is already over 40 years old, but will people still be playing it in another 40 years? In the year 2065 and beyond? Pajitnov seems to think so.

‘Of course they will. Do I think the game needs to change? No, it’s very simple. It’s not a computer production, it’s a human production. Computers change over time, but your brain doesn’t, it remains more or less the same.

‘Talking about AI in games now, at the time I created the game, I used to work in the AI area. I did speech recognition, CAD systems, some other AI research. But at that time we didn’t have enough memory even for very simple stuff. But I created the automatic player for my game for a kind of advertisement, and it plays very well, but that was a very heuristic program, nothing very complicated.

‘What I’m really looking for from AI for Tetris, is I want an automatic commentator of your moves. I want to play and hear, ‘Oh, great move! This block is coming next’ or whatever. So, I really want this help, voice help from AI.’

Competitive Tetris didn’t emerge until the 2010s, when the Classic Tetris World Championship took the humble 1989 NES version and turned it into a high-stakes mind sport. What began as a quirky nostalgia fest rapidly evolved into something astonishingly athletic.

Players pushed the hardware to its limits through techniques that seemed half-mystical, half-deranged: hypertapping, a vibration-fast input method; and later rolling, where players drummed their fingers on the back of the controller to hit 30 horizontal movements per second. Suddenly the game that once lulled commuters into contentment became a spectacle of superhuman reflexes and cracked-knuckle determination.

The Dubai Frame, an enormous gold-trimmed architectural portal, hosted the finals like some futuristic altar to puzzle game devotion. And as if the location wasn’t audacious enough, the centrepiece certainly was: a playable Tetris match projected into the night sky using more than 2,000 drones. It is part esports event, part technological flex, and part childhood nostalgia fever dream.

But the spectacle mattered only because of who was standing beneath it. This year’s field was genuinely international, in a way the Tetris scene has never seen before. National qualifiers took place everywhere from Brazil to India, the UK to Egypt, South Korea to Australia. I was lucky enough to attend the Red Bull Tetris UK Finals, which took place at London’s Red Bull Gaming Sphere last month when Eve ‘Evesylive’ secured their place as UK winner with a block busting score of 614,380 and a place at Dubai.

But when the dust settled in the finals it was Fehmi Atalar of Türkiye who claimed the title of first ever Red Bull Tetris World Champion, outplaying Peru’s Leo Solórzano in a tense five minute final. Solórzano posted a respectable opening score, but Atalar responded with ruthless efficiency, stacking clean lines and high risk placements to finish on a staggering 168,566 points.

‘It’s insane to win today, like it’s unreal right now, I must say. I pulled that off very cleanly and for the five years of Tetris experience, I can say that it’s worth it,’ Fehmi told me.

‘It’s one of a kind to play with drones, I must say. I just want to play casually, and even if I’m a professional, I just want to play casually and after that, let’s see what’s going to happen. Even if I get better than today, maybe better than one year later, I’m not sure, but I just want to play casually and I will just say YOLO and let’s see what’s going to happen. And have fun!’

The mix of seasoned competitors, rising prodigies, online streamers, and local heroes converged for the global final, making the event feel less like a tournament and more like a world congress of puzzle savants.

A viewer watching the drone-lit skyline on a livestream in Manchester or Mumbai will recognise the rhythm instantly. Tetris is universal in a way few games have ever been. A reminder that complexity isn’t a prerequisite for drama. And proof that even after four decades, Tetris still has room to surprise you.

I also spoke to Henk Rodgers, managing director of The Tetris Company about the event, Tetris’s legacy and where it might go next.

‘My job, the way I look at it, is I’m kind of the steward of a great intellectual property and I make sure that it doesn’t lose its way. You know, Mickey Mouse is still around because they carefully protected it for years and years and years, and they still do, and we still do. So that’s what it is. So we didn’t freeze it in time. We don’t. We let it progress little by little, but we also always stay true to our origins.

‘So whenever we start a new version of Tetris, we go back and play the old one, the first one, and then build from there. But having said that, whatever you build better be better than anything that’s out there so far, otherwise we’re going to say no. So we raise the bar each time we have a new licensee, and the game gets better and better.

‘This event is the start of Tetris as an eSport. I think Tetris is the perfect game to become an Olympic game. First of all, it’s got to withstand the test of time. And then a lot of games are just not good material for Olympics. They’re just too violent or the subject matter is just wrong. So this is a game which is clearly just mental ability and hand-to-eye coordination.

‘You get to make decisions fast and you have to be able to push that button fast. That’s a physical and mental competition. What I have seen is young people from 60 different countries and they’re all so excited to be here. You know, it’s just wonderful to have that energy. Tetris has been around for 40 years. Do I see it being around for another 40 years? Do we talk about football? You think football will be around 100 years from now? The answer is absolutely. Of course it will, yeah.

‘Tetris is always going to be here. It’s never going to go away. Its next evolution? Well, it doesn’t have to really change. You know, if I’m building a car and somebody invents power windows, then all cars have to have power windows now. And so, that’s the same thing in Tetris. So, we want to make sure that if somebody invents something that changes games, you know, intrinsically, then we have to make sure we incorporate that into Tetris.

‘But in order for us to go to eSports, up till now, it’s always been focused on the player. What is going to make the player want to play more or have more of an interesting experience? But now, we have to think, what about the spectator? You know, what can we do for the spectator? And the answer is that we’ll have to do things like instant replay. And we have to balance the game. We have to make sure that the game doesn’t get so fast that people can’t watch it anymore.

‘If you’re just an average player, that barely plays Tetris, maybe you can’t understand what they’re doing. And so, we need to take that and make it understandable. AI should show what’s actually going on in the game. You know, statistics, how many lines per minute, how many rotations, how many button presses per second. These are all going to happen for Tetris as well.’

When the final Tetrimino dropped and the skyline glowed with that triumphant four-line flash, it didn’t just mark a victory for one player, it marked victory for a 40-year-old game that refuses to fade.

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