Tetris Spokesman Calls Angry Birds a Fad

[Epona]

well i dont like either of them really. then again im not a casual gamer at all.

But i wouldnt go as brave as calling it a fad. after all, peopel called rock'n'roll a fad. and rap and techno, and skateboards and snowboards and computers and digital trade and back in the days even cars. some "Fads" dont fade.

P.S. capcha: fiotion value (almost fiction value)

I like how how you cherry picked your examples.

 

[Lukeje]

Who the hell actually plays Tetris anymore?

Ermm... I do. *cradles Tetris mug*

 

[mariofan1000]

I would pay good money for a Line Block plush.

Also, fun fact. When the video game crash rolled around, people dismissed video games as a passing fad.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Rogers discussed this phenomenon while noting that selling Tetris swag is not easy without any recognizable characters.

What? The S and Z blocks are freakin' adorable.

That said, I don't think I'll equate Angry Birds to Tetris as a gaming institution until I see someone flawlessly playing Angry Birds at high speed after only having a half-second to look at the structure and the birds he's firing.

(If the first five minutes don't impress, watch the last minute and a half.)

._.

Is he God?

OT: Well, Angry Bird's does have a TON of compeitition, so it is going to be hard pressed to stay at the top of the IOS platform.

 

[JediMB]

Tetris is a game that lasts because it is a geometry puzzle. It's highly stimulating, and while the the pieces handed to the player are random, their placement and effect is always player-controlled.

(Meanwhile, Angry Birds is a game with very random outcomes, where you'll only be able to roughly calculate the effects of your actions, and you're likely to find yourself repeatedly restarting a level in order to get the semi-random outcome you wish for.)

Tetris is a game about shapes made of four colored blocks, like a T or a box, that come down like falling bricks. You can place them in rows, but everybody knows that they made this game for chi-- err...

*plays some more Tetris*

 

[galdon2004]

Now, I wouldn't call it quite a 'fad' persay, but Angry birds just isn't build to last like Tetris is. Every level of angry birds has to be custom built, and tested, which means to the player, buying new level packs constantly to play exactly the same game, and a maximum score you can get on every level. Tetris however creates it's own puzzle by it's mechanics, making it possible to replay endlessly for a higher score.

 

[Carnagath]

Tetris Battle on Facebook has apparently like 9 million monthly Chinese users.

Fixed that for ya. Once I got my rank high enough, I could no longer read the names of my opponents. Ever. Still, Tetris Battle is fun, but there is still some luck element in the battles, which I dislike. Also, the upgrades that let you see many pieces into the future are bullshit, that's not Tetris.

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

I don't think that's a very fair argument to compare Tetris, a 20+ year old game, to Angry Birds...

Tetris is a game about shapes made of four colored blocks, like a T or a box, that come down like falling bricks. You can place them in rows, but everybody knows that they made this game for chi-- err...

*plays some more Tetris*

"Your mom loves it, mine does too (Mine does too). Call me sexist, ***** it's still true!"

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

He calls it a fad, I call it an overrated piece of crap that's a knockoff of far superior flash games.

I hear this criticism about Angry Birds a lot and to me, it doesn't hold a lot of weight. That's like saying Halo is a knockoff of Half Life. Or Sonic is a knock off of Mario.

There's a difference between being in the same genre, and just plain being the same game.

Who the hell actually plays Tetris anymore?

Just to spam-up your in-box with yet another reply: A lot of people play Tetris still. Granted that it's far more popular in Asian countries than in the US, but it's still played even in the US.

Tetris Battle on Facebook has apparently like 9 million monthly Chinese users.

Fixed that for ya. Once I got my rank high enough, I could no longer read the names of my opponents. Ever. Still, Tetris Battle is fun, but there is still some luck element in the battles, which I dislike. Also, the upgrades that let you see many pieces into the future are bullshit, that's not Tetris.

That's only because (as I mentioned above) it's a lot more popular in Asian countries than it is over here, so Asians tend to put the effort into being better at it. Play against the average Tetris player in the States and you can probably beat them very easily, play against the average Tetris player in an Asian country and you'll actually have to put some effort into the match.

 

[SilentHunter7]

Who the hell actually plays Tetris anymore?

Anyone with a smartphone and some time to kill, I'd wager.

 

[DarthFennec]

I dunno. I love Tetris, I always have, but Angry Birds? I played it once, it was ... okay. I don't really get what people see in it. I don't understand why it's so popular. It's not much different than any other Miniclip or Kongregate Flash-based game I used to play in middle school while slacking off in the computer lab. It's just ... launching something at a physics structure and watching it fall over. Plenty of games have done it in the past, plenty more will in the future. But Tetris was written at a time when there weren't many alternatives, and there were plenty of new ideas. It was the original, and things like Tetris and Breakout will always be timeless because they were the first. I just don't see what Angry Birds has going for it. But maybe I'm wrong, I dunno.