Being at EPFL, I suddenly realized that I had a wide access to scientific publication. So naturally, I searched for Tetris (using PubMed, Sciencedirect and Google Scholar). Here is the result of an initial search. I ignored most of article speaking about game violence and those using Tetris as a handy psychoneuroexercice thing. I tried to focus specifically on Tetris itself. Psychology Maglio et Kirsh 1996) Epistemic Action Increases With Skill (: apparently, we make more error as our skill increases. WTF ? Maglio, Wenger et Copeland (2007) Evidence for the role of self-priming in epistemic action: Expertise and the effective use of memory : a continuation of the previous article. I must say I didn't understood those two articles. Math Breuklaar, Demaine, Hohenberger et al. (2004) Tetris is hard, even to approximate : the famous article proving that Tetris is NP-complete (i.e. fracckin' hard) Baccherini et Merlini (2007) Combinatorial analysis of Tetris-like games : every "Tetris-like" game is a finite automaton. Brzustowski (198 Can you win at Tetris ? : A Master thesis: Tetris strategy and analysis from a mathematician point of view. C_t, it was made at University of Waterloo . Carr (2005) Applying reinforcement learning to Tetris : an overview of how people tried to "solve" Tetris. Hoogeboom et Kosters (200 The Theory of Tetris : a review article discussing more of the NP-completeness issue of Tetris. Computer Science B�hm, Kokai et Mandl (2005) An Evolutionary Approach to Tetris : Tetris + Genetic programming = awesome ? Siegel et Chaffee (1996) Genetically Optimizing the Speed of Programs Evolved to Play Tetris : another one. Fahey (200x) Tetris AI: Fahey's famous Tetris AI (and other goodies). Okay, it's not a "real" (i.e. published) article, but it more than good enough. And I haven't read all the article... yet. I haven't explored the bibliography section either.
Re: Tetris for scientist Two recent ones I liked: What baboons, babies and Tetris players tell us about interaction: a biosocial view of norm-based social learning Can Playing the Computer Game Tetris Reduce the Build-Up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cognitive Science (The study behind what we read in the news not to long ago.) When I read this article four years ago I thought, "that's total bullshit. Their 'expert' players most definitely suck." If you look at the data on Ai's LJ 40 lines thread (3/30/09) as well as the data I recorded during the month I played constantly and achieved 3TPS, you'll see there's a negative correlation between speed and KPT (which means the less buttons you press, the faster you go). In Ai's record thread, out of 53 players, there is a -.28 correlation In my data record from October and November (all games finished, none canceled, no games were ever played on a different application), out of 1887 games there is a -.35 correlation. This clearly shows that KPT is important, and that we should be mindful of finesse. The above study showed otherwise probably because the players weren't really that good, and/or there weren't enough players/games played.
Re: Tetris for scientist To be honest, I never believe the results of any scientific studies, because most of them are just BS made up by overconfident academics who will spout any nonsense just to get papers published.
Re: Tetris for scientist Tetris is hard, even to approximate is a good example of this theory in action...
Re: Tetris for scientist Especially when there's no interest in publishing a follow-up paper that disproves the thesis once The Tetris Company amends the Guideline to make the original paper's assumptions (no hold, several piece sequences that never occur in bag, and a rotation system where "after" always overlaps "before") obsolete. Wikipedia, for one, thinks Tetris still uses a memoryless randomizer because the newest "reliable" (i.e. mainstream or scholarly media) source says so, even though the newest reliable source is years old. (The "Tetris is hard" preprint is from October 2002, after Tetris Worlds was published but before the permanence of its changes to the formula became apparent.) Unfortunately, I still don't know of any reliable outlet that would touch "Playing forever".
Re: Tetris for scientist "Tetris is hard, even to approximate." is a mathematical proof. If you are claiming it's bogus, then please show the flaw in the proof. This is not a psychological study where the author's opinion matters. Furthermore, the assumptions in this paper are that one knows in advance ALL of the pieces that are going to be generated and in the exact order, as well as assuming you have an infinite number of moves and rotations before the piece lands. Basically, they are giving you as much freedom as possible (much more than the game gives you), and they still prove the result. Please explain how ANY of TTC's guidelines negate the findings here.
Re: Tetris for scientist Mike, tepples has shown that under TTC's guidelines, you can (in fact) play forever. Also for the record, I like scientific experiments. You find out cool little things you didn't know before.
Re: Tetris for scientist It was tepple's original idea that it could be possible, but I'm the one who proved it.
Re: Tetris for scientist it depends on the person making the report. a lot of those people who attend the university for years and years really do care about learning. you logic also applies to the media. you do need to take it with a grain of salt and the best bet it to look at multiple studies before drawing any conclusions. i tend to be very skeptical myself but there is a lot of knowledge out there these days. it's really interesting how technology has changed the speed of communication.
Re: Tetris for scientist Their result hinges on the assumption that you can be given any sequence of pieces during the game. Since the TTC guidelines mandate the use of a 7-piece bag randomizer, this is a faulty assumption; for example, you cannot receive three S blocks in a row. It's not so much that their findings are bogus, it's that they're not applicable to "real-world" tetris.
Re: Tetris for scientist in fact, their proof assumes a bastet randomizer instead. one that tries to give you the worst possible piece at any given time. Then this is generalized to the fact that a true memoryless randomizer is capable of giving that exact same piece order. Under the Guideline, the counter presumption is true instead, and no killer sequences are available for the randomizer to give.
Re: Tetris for scientist More papers: Breukelaar, Hoogeboom, and Kosters (2003) Tetris is hard, made easy: an alternate way to prove that Tetris is NP-complete. Farias and Van Roy (2006) Tetris: A Study of Randomized Constraint Sampling Heidi Burgiel (1997) How to lose at Tetris more way to lose at Tetris also Kosters' How to construct Tetris configurations: aka automatic Tetris art. Very cool.
Re: Tetris for scientist Barnes, Siderius, and Gelb (2009) Structure, Thermodynamics, and Solubility in Tetromino Fluids (more visualisation/animation) [via Ars Technica]: this team models a fluid using tetramino shapes. This must have been a lot of fun to study. Also, the animations are kinda hypnotic.
Re: Tetris for scientist Breukelaar, Hoogeboom, and Kosters' paper uses a piece sequence that can be represented as a regular expression L(OJO)+OI. That'll never happen in bag (Guideline) or strict history (LJ65) and pretty much never in TGM style history. (Consider the chance of making another O when your history is ...OOJO.) Have any reliable sources for Tetris's switch to a bag randomizer appeared in the past month?
Re: Tetris for scientist You've surely seen it in the news: Holmes EA, James EL, Coode-Bate T, Dee*prose C (2009) Can Playing the Com*pu*ter Game “Tetris” Reduce the Build-Up of Fla*sh*backs for Trauma? A Pro*po*sal from Cog*ni*tive Science. PLoS ONE 4(1): e4153. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004153 So after Goaste, tubgirl, 2 girl 1 cup or other intertube delicacies, play some Tetris, it helps.
Re: Tetris for scientist very interesting. I'm wondering if it does increase memory capacities in a very similar way
Re: Tetris for scientist I was listening to an old Radiolab episode about dreams when they mentioned that work of Prof. Robert Stickgold: Robert Stickgold et al. (2000), Replaying the Game: Hypnagogic Images in Normals and Amnesics They tasked several people to play Tetris 7 hours for 3 days, and asked what they saw during their transition state from wakefulness and sleep (the fancy term is Hypnagogia). Some of these people had anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories, in short). They found that most people thought of or saw a game of Tetris during that pre-sleep period, even the amnesiac ! (and also the amnesiac didn't get better score over the time, suggesting that Tetris skills aren't procedurally learned)
The bag randomizer was developed for The New Tetris, to ensure that in the somewhat near future, the pieces needed for your gold squares would show up. It is a 63 piece bag, as determined through statistical analysis. This is 100% confirmed, even though the info is not on the net anywhere. Authentic Tetris Games made since then have featured the standard 7 bag mostly.
