Tetris World Championship: Building Explosive Esports on 8-bit Nintendo

I am Chris tang where's my video wait I was right here okay so um I'm a indie game developer at Geneva hits parks games we kind of broke off from Capcom into production work for them a long time ago but now we want to make her own IPs I am the senior game designer on strike Blais injure which is a high speed high frame rate spiritual successor to the arcade rail shooter hopefully coming out in the next year for PC arcade and console anybody looking forward to that okay thank you so I'm all not a programmer by trade this is the first game I've done all the game play code for so far so I'm kind of proud of it and also that was recently released was FX unit yuuki for the pc

engine turbo graphics CD system and soon to be available on sega genesis dreamcast and Windows PC I did some additional writing and design on that and they're kind of like our character crossover partner so the game that's or our character that's the main character in our game is a secret character in their game going back further I have past experience working on many fighting games with a street fighter franchise in particular for Capcom as well as primal rage and primal rage - which was infamously cancelled I did a session on primal rage - that I recommend it's people say it's pretty good so it was a GC talk on games getting cancelled and how to live with it I started in the 90s working at a tengan an Atari working on stuff like that I've worked on gauntlet 4 and rampart and some other stuff so yeah I've been I've been in the business a while but I started when I was young so I'm but as old as I see him and in the mid 2000s I worked at bps Blue Planet software who is the official agent and custodian of

the Tetris IP and I worked there as a design consultant at large and a designer on Tetris worlds which was an early basis for the modern more approachable versions of Tetris that you see today and my favorite design contribution to Tetris back then this trailing shadow that I came with came up with for the hard drop mechanic and before this was put in pieces would just teleport instantly to the bottom and you couldn't really tell what the hell was going on so I I thought it should have like a translucent shadow to help you kind of like know what's going on visually it looks kind of cool too so current games like Tetris effect in Tetris 99 have retained this feature so it makes me happy when I see it that developers are still using it even though I didn't get to directly work on those games and aside from game development I have a background as a successful eSports competitor best known for being the Sega world champion as broadcast worldwide on MTV in 1994 and I'm 1990 Nintendo World Championships Los Angeles City champion so I got one of those awesome cartridges that year about and I am the Hawaii State Nintendo

champion just to name a few highlights and incidentally my game career was started when I was discovered at the Nintendo World Championships when I was still a kid and I ended up working at Atari Tengen about a week after that kind of because I was plugging Tetris I'm like oh Tengen hmm Tengen Tetris I know that so eSports and Tetris in particular have led my life down an amazing path so it makes sense that I continue to be involved in these spaces as a commentator and founding consultant for the classic Tetris World Championships going on 10 years now and as you've heard before I'm the voice of the boom Tetris for Jeff meme and I'll explain that later but for now I'll start with the most basic description with classic Tetris World Championships so Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1989 and it's become one of the most fiercely competitive versions of one of the most beloved games in the world but there's a plot twist Tetris for the NES does not have a two-player mode so what do two old CRT TVs are placed next to each other each connected

to an old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System with Tetris game and controller two players play the game of Tetris at the same time one player walks away a winner this version of the game was never intended to be played competitively this way yet when recordings of these strange activities with ancient electronics are uploaded to YouTube people watch our channel has grown to nearly 40 million viewers and recently the viewership for live events has grown exponentially the classic tetris world championships are truly an anomaly in esports if you break it down to its basics yet there's a lot more going on that's allowed it to become a beloved eSports phenomenon at its core are passionate players and fans who love playing a pure classic version of a game that some considered to be perfect we've evolved and improved the format as interest has grown but it got us thinking if we've been able to make a game that was never designed to be used for competition into something so compelling maybe something important could be learned from it so that other great competitions games any sports may

emerge and that's why we're here so beyond the basics now we can pull back and see you the bigger practical picture we're now in our tenth year having started from a small humble community event held at a Los Angeles theater and have grown to be a sponsored yearly event season regional qualifiers held around the world expand our reach leading to the World Championships in October with the World Finals being held at the Portland retro gaming expo since 2012 we have been able to grow alongside this event and helped make Portland in eSports destinations leveraging its already strong retro gaming scene and culture we've created a vibrant and friendly competitive competitive community and grown a substantial following along the way making it the most popular retro eSport in the world with most of our growth happening just in the last two years so to understand how all this happened it's important to know the retro roots of both the game and as previous competitive legacy in 19 in 1989 Nintendo released their versions of Tetris for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy while

these were not the earliest versions of the game release they are the most widely distributed and heavily marketed versions of the game ever made and served as the first exposure of tetris for a generation of gamers Tetris would then go on to become one of the most played and loved video games around the world as you probably know in 1990 Nintendo launched the Nintendo World Championships in power fest featuring a stage show with giant screens and live announcers calling the action this 30-city tour would challenge millions across the country and was the largest competitive gaming event held at the time loosely based on a fictitious competition and the movie The Wizard anybody remember that yeah so it's like yeah Fred Savage mmm-hmm a feature to triathlon of games in which Tetris was a final and pivotal game that determined the outcome of the competition as video games gained traction to become more mainstream in the 90s this first nwc began an era where console manufacturers like Nintendo and Sega held massive multi-city capitation tours where players of all ages could enter for free or low-cost and play in a regional to qualify for a

national or world title participants and champions of this era would later be involved in the interest behind and the formation of the classic Tetris world championships so decades passed and as retro gaming rose in popularity along with the growth of the internet who has found that many people were still interested in playing classic NES Tetris information and media such as gameplay videos beyond a surface and in 2009 Harry Hong submitted a video which earned him the first Twin Galaxies max out score of 999,999 points this led to the production of a short film but harry by filmmaker adam cornelius and this led to more interest in finding other potential tetris masters because it seemed that after all these years one of the most iconic and widely loved games of all time did not yet have an official champion what so NWC 1990 competitor Robin Mahara teamed up with a filmmaker Adam and producer Vince Clemente to hold a competition to answer this unanswered question who is the best Tetris player

in the world on August 8 2010 the first classic Tetris World Championship was held in the downtown independent theater in Los Angeles and we used the original NES console and the tetris cartridge from 1989 and played it all out and CRT TVs the short film Adam has started with now grew to become an award-winning documentary film ecstasy of order the tetris masters which chronicles the road to the first championship and reveals what happened to original and the BC champion Thor acryl n'd this film would serve to increase interest in classic Tetris and our competitive scene going forward so why NES Tetris well NES Tetris is considered to be a more basic difficult but pure version of Tetris pieces locked down nearly instantly when they land and you can't slide them around it's really strict and there's only one piece in the next window the basic left and right movement delayed auto shift behave rotation rotation movement rules and the like are simple but nuanced we call it dass where you hold down like a space

bar on a keyboard it'll go once and it'll go a whole bunch of times after that are we repeating that's what we called ass and that's like something that you need to know to play NES Tetris effectively so it has these mysterious design quirks that make it compelling and challenging but in particular the scoring displays a maximum of 999,999 points with a total score being just on the brink of possibility as such maxing out Tetris is an effective attractive bucket-list gaming achievement and a milestone for tetris esports hopefuls we don't know for sure if the seemingly meticulous balancing was by design or a very happy accident but many consider this version of Tetris to be perfect as a result so if you are the programmer of this game out there watching or know who is please contact us because we would love to hear from you so when a player reaches level 29 NES Tetris pieces fall at a rate of one line per frame making horizontal movement nearly impossible resulting in imminent

death this effectively acts as a kill screen and instantly end the game for nearly any player only a difficult method of movement where a player hits the d-pad faster than 10 times a second to override the delayed auto shift called hyper tapping can allow for further survival the kill screen behavior is unique to NES Tetris and it cannot be played forever like classic Tetris variants such as gameboy version or Tengen Tetris which kind of lets you play forever because they're easy like that the results of these mechanics create an imminent death situation and round times are around six to nine minutes at most in duration which are very good length for an eSports match so for a competitive game to be taken seriously as a sport a standard has to be established which does not change over time with NES Tetris we have a version of the game that served as the first exposure to the franchise for many has a legacy of tournament usage is well documented and has stood the test of time as we've seen players with exceptional skills from the 80s and 90s

can still apply their talents even decades later yet the game is still approachable enough for younger or new challengers to succeed our player base doesn't have to worry about new versions rules game mechanics or character nerfs interfering with their mastery of the game more recent versions of Tetris have a faster appearance with more hard drop mechanics things teleport all over the place and they're harder to follow visually and they allow for more room for error like you can keep hitting the rotate button and the pieces will just bounce around but we noticed that the slower visual pace of NES Tetris actually makes a game easier to learn and comprehend its simplicity ultimately makes it more fun to watch in an eSports context with miss drop mistakes and life-or-death situations coming across dramatically our tournaments run on an original NES hardware and game cartridges which are common and inexpensive to obtain even today with the game being under 5 bucks and old NES system setups well below 50 emulation options are also abundant a CRT television with no lag is recommended however we run all our events on CRTs as a precision of classic

Tetris is so demanding there are one frame windows of error at high levels of play practice skills are directly applicable to the eSport if someone can consistently score high and max out on NES Tetris they have a real shot at becoming world champion just by playing the game within its own rules while I won't go into depth completely with Tetris play mechanics a quick overview should be mentioned so that the bigger picture of our format will make sense in the CTW see the general strategy is like most versions of Tetris stack cleanly leaving a one block space on the right edge of the play field referred to as a well then use the long bar I tetromino to score Tetris as much as possible for our rule set Tetris azar critical for scoring that's why we go a little overboard celebrating them sometimes they're like a touchdown or a jackpot even if they happen pretty frequently in gameplay after a player digs themselves out of a bad situation that's really satisfying to see them finally score that well deserved Tetris come back boom Tetris for you the best players will

score Tetris as safely as they can without wasting scoring potential by clearing lines that are not tetris --is because of the unique behavior of NES Tetris this must be done within the confines of the 230 line window before the kill screen speed increasing hers and Nathalie ending the game as players move in and apparel and as the stacks rise and fall the patterns of victory and defeat are illustrated the dramatic saves and devastating mistakes are easy to understand and with that the visual satisfaction of a puzzle game we feel all those elements are what makes this an eSport that's deceptively compelling a satisfying to watch so now I'll mention some of what we learned over the years and the evolution of our commentary and terminology many common terms exist in Tetris for instance the Tetris well would be one example that every version of Tetris would have but what's interesting is some unique terms have come into existence specifically because of the friction created by the CTW C format and playing the game competitively in a way that I was never designed to be so pace some players play

at a faster pace than others by pressing down on the d-pad and even though one player may have a higher score currently if the other player is playing at a slower pace they may have more lines to work with to maximize their score so that's important in determining potential outcomes and knowing who's really ahead this is something we mentioned in commentary often because it's not really obvious to new viewers droughts NES Tetris has harsh true random pieces and not a bad randomizer that guarantees peace variety like modern versions of Tetris this results in a potentially long period without receiving a certain type of peace most importantly that long bar I tetra Nene know that's necessary for scoring a Tetris so when droughts occur they can be deadly burn champions must know how to stay alive and survive these droughts by doing a burn when necessary to clear lines singles or doubles preferably in a way that doesn't block the well if the Tetris well is blocked badly we sometimes call that a dig if the dig is successful when the well is open again the player is then Tetris ready a speed transition is something we highlight an NES Tetris when a player hits level 19

since then it's an important milestone during CT WC matches yeah and you won't see that term used much outside of this competitive context players need to keep their stack as clean as possible just before the transition and awareness of the the approach of the transition creates anticipation as their imminent death awaits conservative and aggressive play so one of the most frequent comments we get especially with our commentary is how we mentioned aggressive or conservative play how do you play Tetris aggressively you punch your opponent that's sitting next to you no no what we mean by that is by playing aggressively more risks are taken to absolutely maximize the score by not burning off any unnecessary singles doubles or triples conversely playing more safely and burning more lines will keep you out of trouble but it won't score as much play too aggressively and you could end up topping out and gaming over but play too conservatively and your opponent will kick your ass with score so terminology helps us be aware of all these factors that determine the outcome of a match we can then commentate on them and step with the players as their play styles

and personalities become a factor in telling the story that's unfolding while providing a better understanding of the game playful and relatable metaphors like digging add fun to the commentary so there's more to it than is saying boom Tetris a lot even though I think that helps excite people too so check out this screen do you notice anything interesting about this situation keeping in mind that these players are playing on two separate NES systems and TVs exactly both players get the same pieces so a special cartridge pass-through device throw out of like a game genie you know you guys know what a game genius alright works with the original NES Tetris cartridge attached and provides the same random PC for both players in a one-on-one match although we found that top level players could be very consistent no matter what the pset was there is always a question of whether or not one player had an advantage over the other if they had different pieces in the match with the same pieces for both players now in the same round that would never there'd never be any doubt of that again and

that the outcome would be based on skill alone so a referee rolls the dice prior to the round starting and players will enter the number rolled which will generate one of 1000 possible random pea seeds the players don't see the same thing that the broadcast viewers do so we have this overlay that's designed by Trey Harrison and that's what facilitates not only the gameplay screams and the competitor face cams but it processes and reinterprets game information in real time assisting us show runners and increasing excitement for viewers I'll go into a bit of detail on that now so score readout provides automated math with optical character recognition highlighting the score differential players who are behind will have their difference highlighted in red while players who are ahead will have the difference highlighted in green this area that you see at the bottom of the screen has a bunch of different stats and those stats are not usually available in the game so what the game is actually or what our overlay is doing is it's looking at the game and every time it sees something it's actually

keeping that data and processing it and then reinterpreting that data for viewers so TRT stands for tetris percentage rate or the percentage of lines are that have come from tetris --is this is a good measure for how well a player is scoring to max out the score a player needs about 60% or higher percentage of tetris lines B are n stands for burn lines or how many lines have been burned between tetris then of course the glowing long red bar when if that shows up in our overlay that means that drought is taking place the number of pieces spawned since the last long bar or eye piece appeared is displayed below the icon and there's a player name and match winds indicator the red hearts indicate the number of matched matches wand in the set and this main gameplay area has a context-sensitive overlay that replaces dead screens and menus with logos and stats which improve your comprehension even more useful data and stats will be displayed here after a player tops out and of course the faces

of the competitors are displayed nice and large bringing the human element front and center and they're always visible so now to talk a little bit about the path to the championship for a player we started this just as a yearly event but now we hold regionals at satellite events all around the world following Portland retro gaming expose success came other gaming events growing in their own markets such as game on Expo in Phoenix Arizona and retro city fest in Southern California at this network of local convention communities began to form these up-and-coming shows became perfect sites for our regional events last year we had 5 regional qualifier events in the US and partnered with retro HK gaming expo for our events in Europe Asia and regionals in Hong Kong Singapore and Gamescom in Germany while we continued the classic Tetris European Championship our first event partner and that one's been going for a few years now while speeding in these regionals is not required to enter the World Championships it's a nice throwback to the days when constable companies would hold

tours were anyone of any age could come and enter in their region and win a trip for their shot at the world title it's great to be able to give those kinds of opportunities to players once again growing our format while making the tournament more accessible and adding incentives for the players is a win for everyone involved and these growing events it's nice to have something that's kind of established at their show so people want to come out to it so for our rules and format qualifying is really simple and the qualifying stage players just play NES Tetris throughout the day and try to get the highest score that they can they can either line up and make repeated attempts getting in line again after they lose or rent a station for a fee these qualifying rounds are literally just playing the stock game by themselves and trying for a score and this one to one performance parity between practicing at home and qualifying makes it understandable and approachable for hopeless hope not hopeless hopeful tetris contenders and is similar to the player versus player mechanics that are gonna follow that at the end of the qualifying period the top scores eight for a regional where 32 for

the world championships are rounded up and entered into a seated bracket for the one-on-one matchups the bracketed matches are a one on one score contest each player plays on a separate NES station games are started simultaneously and they can go on they go for a score that can beat their opponents there's no direct interaction between the play fields but if you notice what's going on in that gif there's no garbage sending lines and like some versions of Tetris however players can keep an eye on their opponents screen as a strategy if they so choose to do so and can vary their aggression accordingly interestingly I noticed that younger players through this far more frequently than the veterans game start at level 18 as it facilitates the highest scoring potential level 18 last until player clears 130 lines at which point it transitions and the advanced level 19 and the game speeds up dramatically with only the best players being able to survive at this higher speed the game will stay at the speed increasing in level and score values until 230 lines

and the level 29 kill screen is reached where the game soon ends the drama and excitement escalates as players race toward the imminent top out death if a player tops out or dies the other player continues playing until either they top out or they surpass the score that their opponent has achieved so let's take a look at one of these match ends this is from 2019 just reaching level 26 brain but he'd might not be possible for him to catch up when you have a wealth set up now we have a potential now for a kill screen on two levels to go for the second row

[Applause] and so yeah Harry's one of the best players in the world and you know he doesn't get taken out very easily at all so the fact that uh Matt bruco was able to see his predicament and count the number of lines he had left to even be able to score and possibly win if he had made any other liens in that sequence he wouldn't have been able to beat Harry like period so he really pulled off like a last second adjustment and that was a

very impressive end to this day a lot of people say that that's one of the most exciting rounds of tetris so I thought I would use that clip as a way to illustrate how matches end in the CTW see usually so our rules have improved with most of our format stabilizing in 2016 our first year we didn't have pre-qualified slots all right we used to have these pre-qualified slot so if you have like a Guinness World Record or Twin Galaxies record you'd get in automatically but we've done away with that completely we now have 40 slots and all of them have to be earned on site because if you traveled in one of these things you should have a fair shot like everybody else we also had rounds for attempting highest lines before and that started at level 9 which is super slow compared to what you see there and if you found that these phases took too long it didn't provide the excitement like the rounds that you make Tetris --is in and that there were rewarded the most Grand Finals are now 3 out of 5 rounds instead of 2 out of 3 and that provides a more satisfying conclusion since these changes we've seen huge

improvements in our competitors results and increased interest in our scene we found that if players have a clear goal knowing what to practice for and the milestones for their growth because those are universal across just playing NES Tetris they're more motivated to practice and give it their best shot whether qualifying scores constantly getting higher and higher every year and new contenders rising into the scene it ends up being a metric for a global practically viral skill increase on a 30-year old game that would probably not otherwise get that kind of attention so people are studying it and enjoying it more it's kind of it's very interesting to see that dynamic because not every game gets to have that so it's almost like the game gets a second life from what we're doing we stuck with what worked while continuously improved where we were able to and running sort of like eSports in this way as a learning process and we're always looking for more ways to build so our first year we barely had game screens with labels I mean look at that janky pixel name I mean it's like barely acceptable but that's this was back in 2010 and our

tech in broadcast ability says since improved with HD output and the stat overlay system but that tech has had a purpose so you could see here the difference between you know nine years 10 2010 and 2018 now while other eSports focused mostly on a game screen you'll notice that for the classic Tetris World Championships our competitors faces are featured prominently in the presentation and we found it helps viewers connect on a really emotional level with our competitors embracing a human element with every missed drop wince sigh of relief as after a crazy dig and an imminent death gulp coming across an epic fashion fans really enjoy things like European favorite yannis intense expressions up in the upper left corner Matt bruco spatial antics and green teas signature smile which you see on the Left we've started to implement hand cameras to highlight the pure physical skill involved in maneuvers like hyper tapping and continue to experiment by adding new stats to the overlay such as a tetris percentage and burn counter

which help illustrate the complexion of a match better our main set our main rule set works very well but we're still striving to keep things with other possibilities and have added side tournaments for other game variations which may open the door for players that may not normally excel or participate in the main event last year we had a speedrun to level 19 but of course chorion Wan that because he's like super fast and super good and yeah we didn't have a chance and we also had a known Xbox tournament which had interesting results because you'd have players who are normally really good and they telegraph the next piece really well they died really fast so that was interesting to see so this year there's talk of maybe having a dance pad Tetris battle and I for one would love to be part of that and that'll be a lot of fun for spectators so even if you find a formula that works for your main event don't stop thinking of new ideas that might be fun to try so as our competition grew and evolved players develop their own styles and personalities and along with some great stories and while it's impossible to mention or show them all I just like to

mention a few that stand out because they're fun you know and they're good at a variety of things so Harry Hong with his unrivaled speed and aggression chorion he's the hyper tapping Grandmaster from Japan Alex Kerr is like a genius living encyclopedia of all things Tetris if we need to know anything technical trivia things down to the frame Alex will know the lovable Ben Mullen the iconic voice of fighting esports announcer James Chen anyone here know who James Chen is and fighting announcing yeah he's great to work with and the absolute professionalism of our toe Cal who's a new member of our team the entertaining commentary of Heather Ito she's married to Jonas but she's really into Tetris herself and I had added a lot to our commentary and the memorable antics and center well of Zzyzx where's it Hauser because he keeps changing his name every year but as the years pass you know we have these characters and interesting people that that make up see TWC what it

is so now meet Jonas Neubauer we're gonna start to look at these champions now he's what we call the goat or greatest of all time but Michael Jordan of Tetris he's won seven Tetris world championships including the very first one in 2010 and is widely considered to be the best NES Tetris player of all time but he's also become a strong community leader how to grow our scene running streams where he shares his techniques and provides advice he does commentary at Regionals and other events and he has basically become our tetris hero ambassador and our final boss with his consistency and ability to persevere being his trademarks I really believe that interest in are seeing increased and grew as a result of him being such a positive force for what we do and that applies to what this next segment will be about and I've got another video to show John is back in the lead now Oh beautiful play right now

oh great stuff for Jonas and he's gonna get attention at level 26 big tetris join us now with a wide lead of 80,000 points the tetris at eye level could make some cleanup here there we go there's a little bit of cleanup oh boy things are dangerous ringer so he's got to clean up clean geez yeah he didn't get the piece all the way okay he's got a hundred thousand lead he has to count on Joe pitocin he's been able to do it before he's made it to level 32 it's all up to this right now to the single and maybe the Tetris this could mean the victory here caught after Sir Joseph three more the pressure is on the kid right now crazy bills going on always going here the tension held out Petrus rejoins them get you doing it away change one and change we'll do it and a long bar says it gonna come where is it or they're gonna be a drought how is this gonna play out oh he's the belt perfect perfect that's set up now he's still way

to citrus now peace trout [Applause] [Applause] join us back in the leap so yeah that was uh this last past see TWC 2018 grand finals now meet Joseph Sayle he became interested in competitive Tetris after watching the 2016 championship videos on YouTube you know boom Tetris for Jeff and he liked the memes he then watched Jonas's streams on Twitch and ended up learning the game really quickly in 2018

with his crazy hyper tapping skills he became the first player to reach level 31 then the first player to reach level 32 he did a one-handed max out if you notice he actually holds his controller differently than everybody else at the age of 16 he entered the classic Tetris World Championships his first gaming competition ever just to see if he could qualify and because he wanted to hang out with us centrist players and people not having any expectations for himself he ended up tearing through the bracket before taking on the seven-time champion Jonas Neubauer and swept him 300 Josef Staley is a current Tetris world champion showing the world that anyone any age can learn and master classic Tetris opening the doors to a new generation and the future we couldn't have written a better or more dramatic Cinderella story but it happened and our tetris ambassador Jonas show nothing but the highest caliber of class and sportsmanship happy to pass the torch on to this new generation well at least until this year's World Championships now if you look at these stats Jonas Neubauer is a dass user and

Joseph Sayle is you know he's a hyper tapper so there's two different styles that work there you have a veteran who's kind of like from the NES era and then you have Joseph who wasn't even alive when that stuff was being made so there's a lot of interesting things going on just in Tetris right now competitively so we're gonna talk a little bit about our community and what makes it great we think that anything that's evolving into an eSport can can kind of learn from from what's happened with us our community base started with internet forums and rounding up of top players when we first started looking for them and to make that ecstasy of order the tetris masters documentary and when we first started the CT WC to find out who the best Tetris player of the world was there are communities for modern tetris like hard drop and many of their top players crossover in their involvement between classic and modern Tetris as other resources such as YouTube and twitch increased in popularity interest in the CTW see grew and new players began to join the fray something we have

in common with speedrunning communities is a sharing of information and resources former world champion Harry Hong was one of the first players to stream and joined us neubauer followed suit not long after current champion Joseph was even streaming displaying his techniques as he was learning them for himself on the roads of the 2018 championship this was before he even won all these interactions Baker community strong friendly and approachable despite the high levels of skill involved one thing we noticed is how happy and energized we are as a community just to see each other succeed we have a quirky and fun culture people new to seeing what we do seem to be attracted to it because we just seem like we're having a blast and we're also chill and sportsmen like many people have commented that they just want to go to Portland to hang out with us and play Tetris and try to qualify and they end up being being computers that they end up being contributors to our community and become more friends to hang out with and speaking of quirky there's the memes so most of you probably saw it on the way

in or before but just because this is going to be uploaded to the GDC vault I'm gonna have to play it again so this 2016 finals video was Jeff Moore and Jonas Neubauer went viral with nearly ten million views and this screenshots actually from today it's at like 9 9 5 o 35 4 so it's like this weekend it's gotta hit 10 million I was really hoping it would hit it before today but like I even told like our social media people said come on get you know get on the horn tell people to go to bang on that link to to get it to 10 million he'll happen it's okay but this is what for catches and you can Han I apologize up and now Harry on top okay boom Tetris biryani and Tetris for Jeff Jeff with the Tetris and Jim boom another Tetris for Jeff's a dress for Harry Tetris for Jeff scores are neck and neck this is a very exact match it's very next gonna be

neck and neck again neck and neck I think they're both getting the same place piece my very fortunate very neck and neck a connector came back in there we're gonna be neck and neck we have our first our first qualifier for the well Jeff advances Cory on now it dances into the top four so we've got our top forward decided three two one go Oh Tetris for Jeff all players neck-and-neck and nerves aren't a factor from the newbies in the final boom Tetris for Cory odds are now we're neck-and-neck potential for Jeff boom mr. Jeff Harry and Jeff Harry taking the first round and we continue with Jonas versus Cory on neck and neck neck and neck yeah oh alright Jeff takes one round so now we're 1-1 with Jeff versus Harry alright real neck and neck neck and neck neck neck neck and neck and neck and neck Jonas wins the match versus Corey on Harry has been eliminated indeed the top - Jeff easy Jonas Neubauer

in the grand final three two one go boom Tetris for Jeff another tension sir Jeff growing interest for Jeff boom Tetris or jab boom Tetris for Jeff Oh Petrus for jab boom touches for Chad neck and neck Ole Miss for Jeff boom Tetris for Jeff boom Tetris for Jeff Jeff boom Tetris boom Tetris for Jeff neck and neck yeah takes our first round that connect link in there boom Tetris for Jeff neck and neck boom that dress for Jeff boom Tetris for Jeff neck-in-neck boom Tetris for Jeff neck and neck agile does takes that round makes that Rio one one boom Tetris with Geoff edgers for Jeff neck and neck boom Tetris for Jeff oh hey it's neck and neck neck in there Kaiser for Jeff nakka nakka nakka nakka boom Tetris for Jeff neck and neck neck and neck oh I'm Tetris for Jeff neck and neck yeah that they'll be in the Jeff Jonas is will lead at the end he Smith places boom Chester Jeff well Tetris for Jeff boom Tetris for jab boom dentist Jeff boom tensions for jab boom Tetris for ya boom Tetris for Jeff boom Tetris for jab boom boom Tetris jab boom Tetris for jab boom tension sir jab boom tensions for Jeff whoa tensions for job Tetris with Jeff neck and neck neck and neck ready for a tetra Tech where is the long bar

neck and neck boom because it's a joke is so hot gonna happen though and your winner Jonas Neubauer boom catches for Jeff oh so sorry for having to see that again and hopefully you're not too sick of it by now the mean wolf always I hope so boom Tetris for Jeff caught on as a meme most of the 15,000 comments on the 2016 finals video are pretentious for Jeff or some variation and then there's these compilation videos I need to thank you no procrastinating that because it really sort of I don't know condensed everything that was great about boom Tetris for Jeff into one video and it's the best one out there some people love it some people hate it I was completely unaware of boom Tetris for Jeff until months later and by then they were already making t-shirts for the meme like this and it's a really great shirt

and you know if you if you buy one of these that actually helps support the CTW see so that's another good thing by the way this is alan another teenager who got into NES Tetris thanks to the memes and he's already nearly a max tile player and he qualified in the top eight in our West Coast regionals this January and I've noticed the pattern and the younger players out there really like the memes and the fact that Joseph and Alan both got into it because of it there's something there but you can't force a meme but if you're able to kind of roll with it and and embrace them then you could introduce a new generation to your game it's crazy it's a great story though so to explain a little the reason why I even say Brom Tetris for you know everybody I've done that ever since our first year it's origin is a nod to when the Nintendo World Championships announcers would occasionally say boom Tetris because the kids back then wouldn't make Tetris is too often so it was a little bit more special and it actually predates boom

headshot because FPS is in separate head collisions didn't exist back in 1990 in the 2016 Finals I said boom Tetris for Jeff so much by accident people thought I was biased or they thought I had a thing for Jeff or something I mean I liked Jeff but not that way one time I screwed up and said you know boom Tetris for Jeff when Jonas had made a Tetris and that was pretty embarrassing and in fact when I first saw how big the response was and that there's six views at the time and all the comments were like boom Tetris for Jeff and some people were hating on it I thought it meant my doom I actually thought I really screwed up and I was like hanging my head down and I was like man I'm so totally fired I'm like it was nice doing you know the commentator gig but that's over now then Vince told me no you're doing a great job and I'm like you're crazy I just kept saying the same thing over and over again like that's not professional but it became evident that it had this amazing effect on our scene fans would talk about how they loved the CTW see and got into it because of boom Tetris for Jeff and I'm like really I think it

sank in when I ended up on this ESA panel on eSports at San Diego comic-con last year and the family wanted the picture with me and they said we've never seen you before but we know your voice really well pointing out that their kids watch boom Tetris for Jeff over and over and over again like a drug so I've learned to embrace it and have fun with it and it seems like it seeped back into the games themselves I was really moved that this appeared in Tetris effect which is you know like one of the newer games that came out for it and that was the trophy boom Tetris was a trophy and that was like a nod to her competitive community and that really made me feel like what we were doing made a difference and put something nice back into Tetris increasing the interest in it and if you look on the right side that's Tetris 99 and you know they could have any effect that they wanted to for the ko I would think they would just say ko but they made it actually say boom so that was pretty cool and that games really popular right now you guys out there

playing Tetris 99 nice couple people out there how about Tetris effect okay just gotta gauge some popularity out there so when any kind of Tetris is now seeing especially on the Internet you know the common reaction is like boom Tetris for Jeff now I was watching the Nintendo World Championships I think it was 2017 and they had Tetris as one of the games and the chat room was just like boom Tetris for jeffing in there and Jeff wasn't there so yeah we've got other memes like neck-and-neck and peace Minh places but they aren't as universal and well loved as boom Tetris for Jeff and here's some of the comments that showed up on the YouTube video that meme helped to get people watching competitive Tetris but a funny thing happened people would stay and watch the whole thing not know where the time went does it common thread in the comments the sticky attribute where people click on the video ended up watching the whole thing we think it could be the cause of the YouTube algorithm recommending video our videos you know like the 2016 Finals over and over again and expanding it to

a wider audience because I guess they know what people actually watch and many viewers would then get hooked and go and binge watch the rest of our videos so it's the meme just did great things for us now to go to sort of like a darker side of where we were we almost didn't survive like this the CTW c came on the brink of being just ended because after our first tournament 2010 we wanted to continue it but you know it takes money and it takes resources and time and you people have to work hard on it and our second event in 2011 took place at USC Los Angeles so we didn't have the kind of foot traffic that we do at say Portland retro gaming expo and not a lot of people knew about it and it cost a lot you had to rent out a venue and to run everything on your on your own and we did have help from EA who was a Tetris licensee at the time but it was just like insurmountable we didn't think that we'd be able to do one in 2012 things looked grim and it looked like we were gonna top out and game over but we were saved by a miracle for a

third year we were encouraged by Chuck Van Pelt's regrets a Portland retro gaming expo to have the event at his show since some of our founders like Adam and Robin were local so we gave it a shot and I didn't want to go there because I was just like man I'm going to like all these anime cons and all these videogame events and I didn't want to have to go to another state to do this thing but I was like you know what I like what you guys are doing and I felt a connection to it so I went up there and I slept on Adams floor and I'm like all right I'll go and commentate your thing so I went there and I went to the Portland retro gaming expo and I freaking loved it like all these retro games I just like you know bought all this stuff that I couldn't get anywhere else and I like the culture and what they did for retro gaming there so even if I didn't have this gig I would just go there just to go and have fun at the Expo and hang out with my friends and stuff so great Joe so having the tournament at the retro gaming expo gave us an excited built-in audience for free and this was a huge turning point for us because with the CT WC now having a permanent home we didn't have to worry

about the venue and the other logistics and it freed up our time and resources to focus on what mattered most and I expand and improve the tournament so they experienced the portlet retro gaming expo experienced a huge surge and growth around that time and we were able to grow with it as interest in the CT WC increased in recent years more people are now traveling Portland specifically to compete and in spectate the CT WC symbiotic relationships can be pretty awesome so when we first started this we didn't know whether we would be able to get official backing and approval from the IP holders of Tetris even though I used to work for them the tetris company or bps so we did contact them and you know Hank showed up at our first tournament and Alexey even sent the video it was pretty cool we put the honest work and effort into it and I think that's why we're able to get them to do that for our first event we were later sea involvement from companies like EA Ubisoft Sega and most recently enhanced with Tetris effect our community and professionalism was a key part of that members of our staff and founders having backgrounds and production events competitive gaming and eSports played a huge factor so this grassroots yet

official eSports event dream it can be done and with a brand as iconic and important as Tetris we're very happy that you know it's it's not only growing new competitors and champions but what we do reflects back positively back on the tetris brand and the games that we all love and cherish so while the focus of our tournament activities is the classic NES Tetris we also help promote the current or newest versions of it most recently we partnered with enhanced games for tetris effect on playstation vr with special demos at the CTW sea and legendary game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi present I didn't even know he was coming and when he showed up I almost like had a heart attack he's actually here this year too at GDC so hopefully some of you have seen his his session as well top player top players in our Tetris community were also on hand to provide developer feedback for them and to show off their moves in a special tournament we also have site tournaments on popular in newer tetris variants such as tetris the grand master those are some arcade

games and the CT WC has then become a celebration of all things Tetris and licensee partners and IP holders all look forward to every year bringing the old and new together so even prior to our last tournament one of our CT WC Stars and organizers Trey Harrison was featured in the pre-release Tetris effect VR demo video on YouTube and it quickly gained 8 million plus views helping to promote the upcoming title we look forward to helping strength than the tetris brand and ways like this going on into the future so here's some takeaways know your game well inside and out if you want to have an eSport you know what kind of like happened for it but be sure to reach out and enlist experts on the game who know it's rules mechanics that's my OH making sure your video signals ok ok understand make sure that you enlist experts on the game who know it's who's knows its rules mechanics and nuances because they might also become your potential competitors and the heroes of your eSport the CT WC wouldn't have started had the step not been taken a

decade ago a great rule set can make almost any game fun for competition so find what's most fun about your game and bring out the competitive aspect of it for example the best excitement in Tetris is about building and scoring tetris is pushing the limits of survival not just playing fast or playing forever sets and metrics that encourage analysis and discussion and adding elements that make it easier for audiences to understand what's going on help it help make it more fun to watch leaving - audience expansion and if a high-tech method of conveying it is impossible like what we were doing you can just do it through commentary so we're nerdy broker key and we're super welcoming with strong sportsmanship and we all love seeing each other succeed and one awesome thing that our social media has been doing lately is posting and retweeting the accomplishments of all walks of players on their journey through tetris mastery whether it be a new personal best and in an attempt to max out NES Tetris or finally winning that first victory royale on tetris 99 celebrating each other's successes in the nature of what we do and we're very

proud that we love being an example of the very best of what video games can represent when you have a story in which a 16 year kid watchtower Championships got into it because of the memes learned from the world champion on Twitch then became champion himself in just a year the dream of eSports suddenly becomes within reach for everyone so I find partners with common goals and audiences gaming a retro game retro gaming events made a lot of sense for us because having a car than the audience you know it it brought they brought our players to their event and it gave us an audience like that just watched our stuff because it was going on in the background I'm still shocked that people are okay with missing out on all those great deals of retro games that happened when the show was closing but you know that's just me for those communities seeking sponsorship or endorsements from events and IP holders showing a strength of community and running events professionally even without their official blessing can potentially earn it we're fortunate things happen the way they did but there are other examples of

this happening such as in the fighting game scene or another NES favorite Tecmo Bowl with the tech Moe Madison tournaments the prospect of growing a strong eSports presence is attractive to many IP holders so if you're a fan with a plan and a good community it may be possible our Internet president started off small and humble but we didn't let that deter us from getting our stuff out there my gut reaction to seeing my own repetitive commentary I would have been embarrassed and I would have wanted to hide it but that would have been a mistake because it turned into this positive meme that a lot of people love so don't be too embarrassed about your stuff because you never know what would happen and now we're going to get into a bonus takeaway which is as a game designer I feel compelled to take what I've observed and see if it could be applied to games and development so I thought I'd touch on it so while NES Tetris has an axe out as a built-in life goal like a bucket list thing that's not to say that such goals or mechanics can't be devised by design for games and development it doesn't have to be score it could be something like a perfect run or performing a time-based challenge or

something like that achieving Grand Master status and the tetris grandmaster's games which are the arcade ones by arica you have to survive invisible Tetris and the endgame credits and that's an example of an intentionally designed goal for players to chase to prove their skill in a totally different tetris game what your game can offer to facilitate the proof of skill overtime and true mastery is something to think about if you implement skilled a schools that can drive the competitive instinct and discussion which can start a competitive community if your game has mechanics that are unique to it does it have easy to understand interesting terminology to back it up how about fun metaphors that work for it words like Tetris burns well drought and dig help define our gameplay identity and encourage commentary in sports celebratory verb terms like touchdown slam dunk and go from soccer are all iconic we've got boom Tetris for Jeff which is great because it can be an encouragement explanation or exclamation or just a

celebration so what terms and language does your game have and can it be improved for eSports viability focus on the mechanic of the game that is most fun or unique and expand on that to find what the best eSport context or competitive heart of your game are think of your game as a tool for facilitating competition even if it might not be designed to do that at first experiment and add things like spores timers extra modes handicaps or new metrics and something competitive may be born if you have no two player or versus mode well what if you put two setups side by side having a scorer time or time race usually works even in the worst case scenario and that's what we did in the 90s when we had these big massive console gaming competitions so does your game have a finishing moment like a game over or a death and the best sporting events and competitions there's huge and impactful moments like a knockout punch for boxing is a good relatable analogy for a fighting game and Tetris is for us it's popping out as our death mechanism so while we could have gone for something like a

three-minute score attack or first a 25 lines race that wouldn't have the impact of impending doom that we have in NES Tetris so forcing people to play to the kill screen is actually kind of an addicting part of what we do take advantage of the drama of a finish with commentary and build it up however you can now for any competitive context the gaming competition has to facilitate fairness even for Tetris having the RNG of the piece being the same between players is one of the things that made a big difference in making the game feel legitimate and competitive some games implement things like rubber banding like in a racing game they artificially cheat for the player that's behind and make them catch up to make the games more fun for noobs Mario Party and Mario Kart our personal pretty bad offenders but unfairness like that can outright prevent a game from being considered viable for eSports so I suggest restricting those elements beginner modes kids modes or allow options to control or disable them and be transparent with your players so this past year we've gained an unprecedented

amount of mainstream coverage on everything from Fox News CTV Canada to the BBC but I think it's the inviting competitive atmospheres what gave us stories like Joseph's alias as a video game champion myself starting out as a kid being inspired by TV shows like Starrcade and other classic gaming competitions that's what allowed me to find my path to success in life and now to be involved in the CTW sea and seeing it inspire a new generation of champions it's really like a dream come true I feel like I've come full circle so if you have a game franchise or IP or are involved in a games community and want to grow in eSports presence it's a wonderful opportunity to create something positive and life-changing enclosing NWC champion Thor a : said something to me that stuck with me even said it in the ecstasy of order movie and I'd like to expand upon it a little here of all games Tetris is the most like life death is imminent life isn't fair but if you could deal with what they give you and break through that's what makes you a winner so here's to a

healthy stack may your long bar droughts be short and when the pieces fall into place may all your viewer Tetris is go boom boom Tetris for you we're always looking for new sponsors so if you have an IP and are interested contact us and via email as seen here a Tetris championships at gmail.com and if there's time I can take questions I think I've got about five minutes left so go ahead and approach one of the microphones [Applause] so I was completely unaware of all of this but I believe we worked together at pinyin so I'm Franz Lansing her oh my gosh you're the programmer of clocks for Tetris our clocks for NES right no no Oh max was theory though okay yeah I did miss pac-man all right miss pac-man and when you said boom Tetris for Jeff I thought you're talking about Jeff Fiona Jeff Fiona no Jeff conan was

a big part of my growing up he's he was an inspiration to me I kept seeing his name on all the shooters in the back of egm and I want to be just like him and I loved hanging out with him and he designed those bases in this pac-man for you I remember that yeah yeah he did and I think we went to the 1989 championship I mean remember I ever met Jeff at the 1990 Nintendo World Champion oh yeah so he was I think he had a problem with his controller right around a sheet against the station at you know at the Nintendo World Championships on stage and yes escorted offstage and out of the venue and I think he got banned from all Nintendo events very shame because he was one of the top players he really yeah he's a really clear and I remember that was my first exposure to him but he became great friends and he's not the Jeff Jeff Moore is the Tetris Jeff Jeff Yoda and holds a very special place in my heart and I really hope I get to hang out with him and work for them somewhere in the future anyway I don't have any

questions but I thought I'd say hi yeah hi Franz good to see you you touched a little bit on this I think but give any suggestions for how to make eSports approachable to folks that'll never be a world championship but they still want to compete and play and have a good time okay so what you can do is you can have side tournaments that aren't the core tournament and maybe you don't let the top tier players enter that one and like I mentioned there's like a dance pad battle for tetris like the people who are like super good at Tetris probably aren't gonna be the best at that but the dance players might be really good at it so having a side challenge can get people kind of like interested in like you can change the rules a bit make it easier for for folks like maybe having I wouldn't exactly say amateur but rules but I think of something creative like like playing the game on like a super easy mode and then seeing how far they can scroll the screen in like one minute or something like something really basic right like

something that they don't need a like a super high level of skills to pull off but it might just be interested interesting to see what comes with it any other questions anyone just want to come up and make me say boom Tetris for them okay well thanks for coming to my session I know that there was double me cry and some other stuff going on thanks for coming to Tetris we're gonna continue you know during our event every year and hopefully will grow and inspire more kids to yo stay off a fortnight and stay off the streets and you'll play some competitive Tetris so boom Tetris for you and Tetris for GDC [Applause]