Review Fix Exclusive: Box Brown Talks ‘Tetris: The Games People Play’

Review Fix chats with writer and artist Box Brown, who discusses his new graphic novel, “Tetris: The Games People Play.” Telling the true story of the world’s most popular video game, Brown untangles the game’s complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture and commerce.

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Review Fix: What made this book a must-write for you?

Box Brown: Tetris is such a ubiquitous game.  It’s like checkers.  It was a game my parents would play.  I found Alexey’s story interesting because he created Tetris as a pure art project.  There wasn’t even a profit motive in Russia at the time.  It was created based on pure inspiration.  And, then the piece of art wasn’t taken away from him and they applied capitalism to it and then chaos ensued.  I think it’s something that kind of happens to all pieces of art in a much less extreme form.

Review Fix: How did Tetris affect you as a kid?

Brown: I definitely put in my 10,000 hours playing Tetris.  I actually still remember the serial number on the back of my Gameboy.  It was necessary to remember because every kid had a Gameboy and you had to make sure you didn’t end up with someone else’s.  I played it so much even into my late teens which was seven or eight years after it was released.  But even still, I never thought of myself as a Tetris expert.  It’s still just as challenging and rewarding now as it was then.

Review Fix: What other games do you enjoy?

Brown: I am a freak for Kairosoft simulation games for iPhone.  They’ve made a ton of them at this point.  You always run a little business or create something and you have to manage the workers and stuff.  I love them! Can’t get enough! I even made a fake version of a Kairosoft Game about Pro-wrestling called God of Wrestling. (http://boxbrown.com/godofwrestling)

Review Fix: As with your Andre the Giant book, I’ve always loved how deep you get into your subjects. What was the research process like for this?

Brown: It involves buying a ton of books and consuming basically every piece of media you can find on the subject.  Anything even tangentially related starts ringing bells in your ears.  I really have to surround myself with all this stuff and become obsessed with the material.  At that point you can kind of start figuring out where the story is.  And, then you add stuff, remove stuff, rearrange stuff delete stuff, redraw stuff, etc.

Review Fix: Did you find out anything that shocked and surprised you?

Brown: There’s a particularly tragic moment in the book that really shocked me.  It involves murder and suicide.  I almost didn’t include it, but ultimately it’s something that happened and I felt like it needed to be in the book.  These are real event and this is how it went down.

Review Fix: How do you want this book to be remembered?

Brown: I try not to think about stuff like that.  I hope that people are enlightened about what goes into art, entertainment and commerce.  And I hope people think about how and why we play and make games.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Brown: More non-fiction books. I love non-fiction and documentary film, too.