OXO TALKS | TETRIS. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE AND WITHOUT COPYRIGHT

The history of Tetris, by Alexey Pakhitnov,stars in one of the most bizarre and juicy stories of the videogame culture industry. We talk about what happened to make Tetris jump from a Soviet computer centre to a worldwide conquest of computers, consoles and PCs. We also analyse Tetris as a saga.

José María Villalobos

José María Villalobos has been writing professionally about cinema and video games since 2008. In his career he accumulates more than 2000 entries published in corporate blog groups such as Hipertextual and WeblogsSL (Extracine, Vidaextra, Espinof, Xataka, etc) and media such as GTM, Manual, Gamereport or Start. Since 2018 you can read his texts in MeriStation, one of the most important video game websites in our country, belonging to the PRISA Group.

Villalobos is the author of ‘Cine y videojuegos: un diálogo transversal’ (2015), the first book in Spanish that deals with the relationship between both artistic manifestations. This pioneering character has led him to receive hundreds of mentions in academic texts in Spain and Latin America, as well as to give lectures at festivals and universities on both sides of the Atlantic. The first book by a Spanish author published by Héroes de papel (a publishing house that now has more than 150 published references), ‘Cine y videojuegos: un diálogo transversal’ was a finalist in 2016 in the Best Film Book section of the prestigious ASECAN Andalusian Film Awards (the Andalusian Film Writers' Association). Today, with more than 3,000 copies sold, this renowned essay is now in its fourth edition.

In 2020 he publishes the digital dystopia ‘Te regalo el fin del mundo’ (I give you the end of the world). The first novel by José María Villalobos covers topics such as digital transhumanism, identity within a framework of permanent virtual reality or climate change, but, above all, it is defined by the author himself as a VR SciFi adventure novel. The main story is complemented on the other side by ‘Beyond the end of the world’, fourteen stories that enrich the plot and characters in a multifaceted way.

In 2022, Villalobos teaches Game Design at the FEVAL Technology Centre in Don Benito (Extremadura), as well as conferences, workshops and informative courses on interactive media. At the beginning of 2023, he was asked by the international educational experience platform GrowPro Experience, founded in Melbourne, Australia, to work as Senior Editor.