Portrait of Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, co-creator of Tetris game

Ever heard of Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov? Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is born in Russia (Soviet Union) in 1956. Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is one of the creator of the game Tetris, commonly known in the gamer world as being one of the greatest video game of all time. Tetris is being recognize as the game that gave birth to the casual games industry.

The game name "Tetris" was Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov idea. The word is a combination of "tetramino" and "tennis".

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is an engineer. While working for the Computer Center at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, with the help of his colleagues Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov, created the Tetris game. On June 16, 1984, Tetris was born. At the time, Dmitry Pavlovsky was only 16 years old. Through his computer science teacher Arkady Borkovsky, Dmitry Pavlovsky was working and playing with IBM PCs of the Computer Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. During his teen years, while leaning programming, Dmitry Pavlovsky help to establish the Tetris game.

Arkady Borkovsky currently work as a Chief Technology Officer for the Yandex Labs based in Silicon Valley. Arkady Borkovsky is a graduate form the Moscow State University. Yandex is a search engine mostly used in Russia. In ex-USSR, Yandex processed over 64% of search queries. In Russia, 64% of Internet surfers use Yandex to perform their searches.

Just like Dmitry Pavlovsky, Vadim Gerasimov was only 16 years old when he participated to Tetris establishment. Following Tetris debut, Vadim Gerasimov ported Tetris original game to the PC architecture. Vadim Gerasimov hold a Ph.D. from Moscow State University. Vadim Gerasimov now work as an engineer in Australia for Google Australia.

Between 1984 and 1986, Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov actively worked on the development of the Tetris game. The game was first encrypt for MS DOS. Together, the team work on several games. Most of them are today lost. Vadim Gerasimov had been able to find one of those games. According to Vadim Gerasimov, the "game was a remake of Xonix with an inverted hidden play field. Dmitry named it Antix (short for Antixonix)". The team work together for a couple of years.

While being unable to sell their game in their home Russia, the 3 friends distributed for free to their friends. Tetris was a huge hit in Russia in the 1980s.

In 1990, Dmitry Pavlovsky immigrated to UK in 1990. A year after, in 1991, Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov moved to the USA. Vadim Gerasimov stayed in Russia 2 more years following Dmitry Pavlovsky departure to complete a BS/MS in applied mathematics from Moscow State University.

Vadim Gerasimov never earned any revenues from Tetris. For Tetris, Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov, and Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov alone win the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award and the LARA - Der Deutsche Games Award. Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov manage the exclusive licensing rights of Tetris.

Tetris is played in more than 50 countries and has been translated into more than 50 languages. In recent years, over 75 million Tetris products have been sold on mobile devices. Tetris is ranked as one of the All-Time Top 10 Paid Applications on the Apple iTunes App Store.

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov and American entrepreneur Henk Rogers native of Holland founded the Tetris Company in 1996.