Most people born in the 1980s and 1990s may have played Tetris. In that era of lack of entertainment and games, this simple little game captured the hearts of countless people.

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Written by Shen Mengxi

Most of the post-80s and 90s may have played " Tetris ". In that era of lack of entertainment and games, this simple little game captured the hearts of countless people. Of course, this is the case. Tetris is an extremely successful game. It was once popular all over the world in the 1980s and 1990s. To this day, it has sold 170 million copies on major game platforms, becoming the second best-selling electronic game in history.

"Tetris" is a childhood memory of many people. Image source: public domain

This game operation is very simple. You only need to lower, left, right, and rotate 4 keys to control the 7 4-frame squares that fall on the screen. When the whereabouts of these squares fill a whole row, this line will be eliminated. The more rows you eliminate, the higher the score.

The task of Tetris is to eliminate it. Image source: wikipediapublic domain

Because there were few types of electronic games at that time, and Tetris was simple to play and fast to get started, especially when it had no levels at that time, as long as it did not die, it could continue to disappear, so it quickly attracted a large number of players to be addicted to it. Some players spend all day playing, even sleeplessly. After they finish playing and looking at the real world, they will find that everything they see looks like Tetris - whether it is the milk box on supermarket shelves or the buildings in the distance, they are all like rotating and jumping cubes. When you go to bed at night, you can still see all kinds of colored blocks falling down when you close your eyes. Since this phenomenon was originally described by Tetris players, it is called Tetris effect .

Tetris-style architecture in the fantasy of artists. The world in the eyes of those who have been addicted to games for too long may be like this. Image source: Artist

@mariyanatanasov Screenshot of the work of the work on instagram

However, this phenomenon does not only appear in "Tetris". After experiencing long-term Go and playing Rubik's Cube, some people will find that their vision will become a black and white network grid, or a rotating Rubik's Cube. Moreover, as the sound, light and electric effects of the game become more and more excellent, more and more people have also experienced this phenomenon after playing other games, especially after the emergence of modern VR/AR games, many people who have been addicted for a long time often find it difficult to distinguish between virtual and reality when they are separated from the game.

's addiction to Tetris and the Tetris effect seem to be harmful to players, but recent years of research has shown that playing Tetris properly with is not only harmless, but also beneficial to .

In the 1990s, scientists found that people who played Tetris for the first time had a significant increase in their brain glucose metabolism rate (GMR) - which means that the brain consumed more energy while playing games. After playing for 4 to 8 weeks, these people's GMR fell back to their original level, and the game score increased by 7 times compared to before. This result shows that after long-term game training, the efficiency of players' brains has increased greatly. An experiment in 2009 proved that playing Tetris would increase the thickness of the cerebral cortex, which proved this in terms of brain structure.

After Tetris training, the volunteers' cerebral cortex thickened (red part). Image source: References [3]

Not only that, but scientists have also proved that playing Tetris is also helpful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This disease will occur when people experience emotions, wars, traffic accidents, natural disasters, and other accidents. Symptoms include the recurrence of related memories involuntarily in dreams or in awake states (flashback), nightmare, personality changes, irritability, escape, amnesia, etc.In 2009, scientists watched a short video for volunteers, with violence and death scenes, half of which were arranged to play Tetris for 10 minutes, and the other half as a control group, doing nothing. In a survey a week later, it was found that people who played Tetris had fewer flashbacks and had less trauma effects.

Tetris' experimental process for treating PTSD Image source: References [4]

In another experiment conducted in 2014, scientists found 31 undergraduate students to participate in the experiment, and reported their desire for food, beverages, cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, etc. 7 times a day within a week in the form of a questionnaire. One group of experimenters was asked to submit a report after playing Tetris for 3 minutes. It turned out that during this week, as long as they played the game, their desire for these substances would decrease on average by about 13.9%. The conclusions of these experiments have led some foreign institutions that treat addicts such as tobacco, alcohol, and drugs to play Tetris as an auxiliary means in their addiction treatment and promote it to their patients.

Screenshot on the official website of a British treatment institution, TETRIS is "Tetris"

So why can Tetris make people addicted, and why can it have so many "healing" effects?

Some scientists believe that the reason why it makes people addicted is that people themselves tend to "tidy up". When they see messy objects, we tend to straighten them out (just a family must be neat?), but Tetris will continue to create untidy. When we finally eliminate one line, the newly dropped blocks make another line untidy, and thus "seduce" us to continue. At the same time, successfully eliminating a line can give us a kind of feedback of success, which allows us to constantly gain a sense of satisfaction. The cycle of "seduction" and satisfaction supports us to continue, even sleeplessly. This pleasure of "elimination" is so tempting that a similar "Elimination Music" has become popular all over the country.

When playing Tetris, the messy Tetris will naturally make people have the urge to straighten it out. Image source: https://chvin.github.io/react-tetris/

In addition, the Tetris effect may also be related to a psychological phenomenon called " Tsaiganik effect ". This psychological phenomenon was named by the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeegarnik, who found that the waiters in the restaurant would clearly remember the dishes at every table in the restaurant, but once the food and drinks were served, they would forget it completely and could never remember it. Tsaiganick believes that this is because it is easier for people to remember unfinished work, or interrupted work, rather than completed work. This psychological phenomenon has been used in many current scenarios, such as the advertisements of Q&A variety shows, which are often interspersed when the question is released but the answer is not given; serialized novels are often out of context when halfway through the story (this author is often scolded as "out of context"); there are always messages in mobile software such as "65% of your personal information has been filled in", etc.

The numbers pointed to by the arrow are all tempting us: things are not completed! In similar situations, we can see them as long as we turn on the mobile phone, including but not limited to some computer managers' floating balls, etc. Picture source: Screenshot of the author's mobile phone

. There is no link setting in "Tetris", and as long as we don't die, the tetris will be dropped all the time. This mechanism is undoubtedly very consistent with the "Tsaigarnik effect", and will make people remember the Tetris deeply. It may also be because this is a deep visual memory. After playing Tetris, the limited visual memory resources in people's minds are squeezed out, resulting in the relatively less profound memory related to PTSD, so its effect is obvious in treating this disease.

. In terms of reducing desire and helping addictive treatment, some scientists proposed the Elaborated Intrusion Theory, believing that people's desire for food and addictive objects comes from visual triggers, and Tetris helps interfere with these visual triggers, thereby significantly reducing desire.

Of course, people's research on the psychological effects attached to Tetris so far is still very shallow. Only some of the effects have been observed. The causes of these effects are only speculated. It is in a stage where you know the truth but not the reason, and it still requires more research from scientists.

Finally, a small play is fun, and a big play is harmful to the body. I hope everyone will not be addicted to the game.

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Cover source: Neiwen

Reference:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

[2] https://www.wired.com/1994/05/tetris-2/

[3] Haier R J, Karama S, Leyba L, et al. MRI assessment of cortical thickness and functional activity changes in adolescent girls following three months of practice on a visual-spatial task[J]. BMC research notes, 2009, 2(1): 1-7.

[4] Holmes E A, James E L, Coode-Bate T, et al. Can playing the computer game “Tetris” reduce the build-up of flashbacks for trauma? A proposal from cognitive science[J]. PloS one, 2009, 4(1): e4153.

[5]https://www.spring.org.uk/2021/06/zeegarnik-effect.phph

[6]https://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/addiction-tetris-8734823/

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