When you think of esports, Tetris likely doesn’t come to mind. Even NES Tetris was played on original hardware. This weekend, however, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo will feature a brand new exhibit. Classic Tetris World Champion (CTWC) will be crowned, and it’ll likely be the most hotly contested, highest-viewed tournament in the game’s almost 35-year history.
Classic Tetris has had an illustrious history Explosion of interest in the last few years but it’s fast approaching a crossroads. It must either accept its fate as a curious, but cozy, corner in the gaming world or professionalize it.
The trouble is, even the top players aren’t sure a professional league is realistic. “Do I think this could become a viable esport? Absolutely not.” Fractal161, a competitor with a very real chance of winning this weekend’s World Championships, told Engadget.
The annual event in Portland remains the game’s most prestigious tournament, but for the rest of the year, Classic Tetris fans can be found at CTM – Classic Tetris Monthly – a more informal, but arguably more important competition for the game.
“CTM was created by a streamer called Friday Witch in December 2017, and it was more just a casual kind of community thing.” Keith “vandweller” Didion, CTM’s current organizer and perennial host told Engadget. In October 2018, he took over the tournament organisation.
CTM has grown from a handful of players to form a single bracket to hundreds of players competing at different skill levels every month. The original concept was one 16-player tournament, but that meant anyone that wasn’t good enough would never get to play. “When I took it over my kind of pledge to the community was everybody who submitted a qualifier will get to play” Didion said.
CTM and CTWC offer prize pools, but they are small compared to the seven-figure worlds offered by something like. Fortnite. If you win CTWC outright, you’ll take home $3,000 with the rest of the $10,000 purse being divided between the next 15 placements. CTM, on other hand, usually rewards the top eight placements. The $10,000 purse is however entirely user-generated so it changes month to month. The average pool size is around $3500, with half of that going to overall winners.
“I think for a lot of top players, since we’re all kids, we see this as a lot of money. Regardless of whatever it ends up being.” Fractal added. While this may be true, the perspective of these players will likely change once they have reached an age where they can start paying rent or their insurance premiums.
The fact that CTM’s purse relies on donations might present a problem longer term: “We have someone called ShallBeSatisfied that contributes $1,000 – $2,000 in the month. This is the other dogwatchingtetris. This individual ScottGray76, he contributes a good amount on a monthly basis.” Didion said. CTM has a limited financial incentive.
CTM currently runs at a loss. Didion certainly doesn’t pay himself. There is some income from Twitch and YouTube but that’s used to pay community members for restreaming games and other contributions they make. “We are starting to explore sponsorships and things like that. It’s not something I am very good at. So I’m trying to bring in people that know more than I do, or are just better at that kind of stuff than me,” he added.
Classic Monthly Tetris
As Didion explains, so far there’s only been one from an enthusiastic fan who reached out asking if they could sponsor last month’s tournament for $100. “Sure. Let’s do it. I’m excited by that just because that’s how I want the sponsorships to be, like something I care about, or people in our community.”
Didion obviously cares deeply about the community he’s built and competitive NES Tetris generally. Even his players feel he should be open to making the game more profitable. “He says that he runs this at a loss and that’s just ridiculous to me.” Fractal said. “I think that he is entitled to a share of the prize pool, if he desired, this is standard for lots of tournaments.”
Here comes the next, more delicate issue. CTWC strives for authenticity. All games are played in-person (barring the pandemic years), on original NES consoles plugged to CRT televisions. It is played exactly as it was on the day it was launched.
With CTM, Didion’s unwavering commitment to making the game accessible means he doesn’t have the luxury of making sure everyone has their own NES and CRT and copy of the game. He must allow participants to use what they have online because the tournament is entirely online. Standardizing would be costly.
What’s more, In 1989, when NES Tetris was released, level 29 was most likely designed to be the end of the game. The speed increases so much it’s unplayable earning it the name “killscreen.” Today’s players have mastered techniques to carry on well past level 29 and that requires light modifications to the game for the score to display correctly as the original never expected anyone to accumulate more than 999,999 and thus it cannot display a number higher than that.
CTM is also where many world records have been broken. Fractal claims that not all marathon fans are enjoying the matches, with players now being able to play for almost as long as they like and new records becoming harder to attain. “I’ve heard a lot of testimonials about how they don’t really watch the killscreen anymore because it’s just not fun. I think it’s different when you catch it live personally.” Didion agrees. “I think for this esport to grow I don’t think that we can continue to have endless chase downs, post killscreen.”
Matches have become a place where records can be broken, to feeling almost like a broken record. To address this, and make matches more exciting, CTM has modified the game for its highest bracket so that at level 49 it doubles in speed – something known as “double killscreen.”
Some other minor changes were also made. In the beginning, there were only two players playing Tetris simultaneously. The victor was the player with the highest score. More recently, CTM has added the ability for games to use the same random number “seed.” This ensures both players get the exact same pieces in the same order making it a true like-for-like showdown.
It’s these modifications that could pose the real issue for CTM’s growth as an esport. When using copyrighted game code, the use of emulators has been somewhat of a legal grey area. Modifying and distribution of ROMs can be a more difficult task than others (no money changes hands for ROMs in CTM). Nintendo is known for being aggressive against all forms of violence Fans versions of the gamesBeing made available online. Ironically, however, the greater barrier may be The Tetris Company itself.
In 1996, Alexey Pajitnov, creator of Tetris created the Tetris Company. The Tetris Company owns the worldwide rights for both the game as well as the brand. Didion described the company’s relationship with the community as “mostly benign neglect,” while Fractal is said it had a history of “somewhat aggressive takedowns.” The Tetris Company, for its part, is a major sponsor of CTWC and is actively encouraging new ways to play the game via Tetris Effect, ConnectedModern consoles.
Ironically, a lot of the challenges competitive NES Tetris faces – clunky old hardware, glitches in the game and a true online multiplayer mode are theoretically solved by Tetris Effect Linked’s Classic Score Attack mode. It’s essentially a modern yet faithful reproduction of NES Tetris playable on Xbox and PC. It supports native battle modes for two players and was developed together with a legend from the Classic Tetris scene. Greentea.
I asked Fractal why players don’t migrate over to the “official” version that could still be used for CTM competitions. “mainly we’re all comfortable with the status quo, so there’s no big incentive to change,” he told me over Discord. “and the negative feedback loop of nobody wanting to play because there’s nobody to play against.”
This is a good summary of the paradox in many ways. The game’s appeal seems to hinge on authenticity. CTM made some concessions to make NES Tetris more easily accessible and enjoyable to watch. However, the original game and all its secrets and quirks are just as important as the gameplay and scoring.
But this need for authenticity is also what’s preventing Classic NES Tetris from being able to grow into itself as an evolving esport. CTM’s loyal host does see some ways around this. “There could be a team element to it in the future. If we were to continue, and this would allow the teams to market themselves or their franchises as owners of these teams, I don’t know.”
He had toyed with building “characters” around the players, similar to other sports. “One of the problems is everybody’s so young, so they haven’t been around long enough to have stories you’re just like, ‘Oh, I was born in Michigan and now I’m 16.’ Okay, all right, great.” But it’s clear that whatever happens next and however it evolves, Didion will likely be the person making it happen.
CTM seems to have created a community that is far more interesting and special than any financial incentive. It’s hard not to get the feeling that it’s less about preserving the integrity of NES Tetris, as it is about keeping this collaborative, genuinely connected community as it is, without letting the pressures of professional play or the looming specter of Mountain Dew-style sponsorships from taking that away.
Or in Fractal’s case, good friends and questionable fried chicken is all you need. “I’m not going to CTWC to win the prize pool. I will be hanging out with people I don’t know except online. And go to Raising Cane’s with like a bunch of people who really love Raising Cane’s for some reason.”
Engadget recommends only products that have been reviewed by our editorial staff. This is independent from our parent company. Affiliate links may be included in some of our stories. We may be compensated if you purchase something using one of these affiliate links. All prices are accurate at the time they were published.
