Soviet Blocks
The Bizarre Puzzle of How Tetris Embraced Western Values
$71.95
- Paperback
200 pages
- Release Date
20 October 2026
Summary
A geopolitical and legal history of the bestselling videogame Tetris—the stunningly successful game that began in a Soviet research lab monitored by the KGB.
Tetris, the game that would take the world by storm, was formally introduced to the West in 1987, at a time when Soviet technology exports were minimal and the Berlin Wall was still standing strong. Far from being a capitalist cultural product, the game had actually been designed in a Soviet computer lab tightly monitored by the …
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262054584 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262054582 |
| Author: | Julien Mailland |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 200 |
| Release Date: | 20 October 2026 |
| Weight: | 369g |
| Dimensions: | 152mm x 229mm |
| Series: | Game Histories |
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Critics Review
ENDORSEMENTS
“A compelling read, and a remarkable story. I started reading it and it hooked me immediately. You may think you know the history of Tetris, but the real story is crazier than anything you—or Hollywood—could have imagined.”
—Mark Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
“Hiding behind Tetris’s elegant simplicity lies a tangled production history. In Soviet Blocks, Julien Mailland arranges evidence like so many falling tetrominoes to tell the story of how a Cold War plaything attracted competing origin stories and claims of authorship as it became a lucrative property in the capitalist West. This is a must-read for game studies and legal studies scholars alike.”
—Matthew Thomas Payne, author of Eugene Jarvis: King of the Arcade and Playing War
Julien Mailland
Julien Mailland is a technology industry attorney, Associate Professor of Media Law & Management at the Indiana University Media School, Adjunct Associate Professor of Informatics at the Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, and Associate Editor of The Information Society. He is the author of The Game That Never Ends and coauthor of Minitel (both MIT Press).
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