space invaders is a simple game based on simple premise, at least on the surface. your lone ships stands before a baying horde of foreign grotesques, intent on destruction, you fire your weapon, you score shoots up and the dopamine flows through your veins. is it really a simple action game or allegory for the addiction of colonialism? acting as a small force with superior weaponry dispensing with the rushing horde primitive alien masses, it's clear that it is you the player who is acting as the colonial occupier, you are the invader.
While some cling to the outdated notion that Tetris might be "problematic" due to its Russian roots, I find myself celebrating the fact that it represents a culture often ignored and left behind in modern discourse. Any level of whiteness and the privilege afforded from it that the Russian people enjoy is broadly overshadowed by the unique cultural perspective that brought us socialism.
No, my personal criticism of Tetris hews closer to the way it seems to praise order and normalcy over that which is outside the norm. As I watch the blocks fall and form irregular shapes, I can't help but see them as our own quirks and differences given form. That gap of several blocks at the bottom? A black man, left behind because he doesn't conform to white society. The tall, overhanging ledge of blocks interrupting that perfect wall? A transwoman, told that she will never fit in, that there is no place for her here. A perfect row represents conservatism, the alt-right constructing their gleaming, one-way society brick by brick. The bricks are whisked away and you are thus reward for enforcing the status quo. Allow too many gaps in your wall, too many "weirdos" and "freaks," LGBTQIA, minorities, women, and we are told the entire system will crumble. A game over.
Might other designs exist in this vein of gameplay that could allow or even glorify other success states? In the long run, we may need to lower our guard ever-so-slightly and allow Alexey Pajitnov, a white male, to help show us the way.
