Stuck In A Game: The Tetris Effect

Written by Apple Van

Have you ever looked outside after a night of grinding video games such as “Bloxburg” and started to wonder how that chair next to you fits on grid squares? This is a common illusion called the “Tetris effect”. This effect is a term to describe how the brain quickly adapts to the logic of video games and starts to pattern the human thought process according to the game.

The term became popularized in the 1990s as the puzzle game, “Tetris”, made its successful debut with many immediately implementing it into their routine to spend a few hours playing it everyday. Many of whom recorded seeing blocks falling whilst strolling on the street, mentally arranging books on a bookshelf or even staring at tiles on a building. 

This happens through the “Neuroplasticity” of our brains, which is a term to describe how flexible and elastic our brains are. After long hours of repeating the same repetitive tasks: rotating tetris blocks, placing down blocks in minecraft or aligning walls. Constant exposure means that the brain is practising recognising and responding to it. As a result of this, the patterns become easier for the brain to spot and slowly start to show up during sleep or at times completely unrelated to the game.

Despite the effect itself being named “The Tetris Effect”, the effect is not subjected to only Tetris. Imagine this, you start a new year and have new teachers and classrooms that you must arrive to each period. Instead of going the familiar route along the bridge and up the stairs, you now must move down the stairs and to another building. By constantly doing this, there is an element of repetition that you must learn and adapt to. Later that night, you may find yourself thinking about an easier route, the brain is continuing to process, organise and optimize the repetitive task even after you've stopped doing it.

You may see the effect as just a fun fact, but it has shown to offer significant benefits to society. The tetris effect only serves as more evidence that repetition strengthens memory. Similar to playing tetris for a few hours every day, by having that spaced repetition in things like studying only triggers the brain to deposit it into the long term memory. Furthermore, it proves that learning by seeing visuals such as diagrams or shapes can train the brain to apply that into real-life scenarios. Since many exam questions require applying theory onto real-world scenarios, adopting a pattern-based study method makes complex information easier to understand and execute. It enhances creative thinking that is needed for careers in architecture, graphic designing or even engineering.

To conclude, the tetris effect is more than just an illusion or a lingering after image. It is a demonstration of the adaptability of our brains. It has unlocked the secrets to retaining information by studying the brain's behaviour. By understanding how the brain consolidates information, it can be applied to complete tasks in our daily lives.