Maya Rogers | |
|---|---|
 Rogers in Honolulu, Hawaii, 2022 | |
| Alma mater | |
| Employer | |
| Parent(s) | |
Maya Rogers (born May 1978) is a businesswoman and entrepreneur known for her work in the video game industry. She is the president and CEO of The Tetris Company, the company that manages the licensing and development of the Tetris brand. [1]
Rogers was educated in Japan before moving to the United States with her family. Her father, Henk Rogers, was a video game developer who secured the rights to distribute Tetris on Video game consoles and began to base his businesses in the U.S. She attended Pepperdine University in Los Angeles County, California, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration between 1996 and 2000. She also graduated with an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University between 2007 and 2009. [2]
Prior to joining Tetris, Rogers worked as a logistics analyst at American Honda Motor Company, Inc., and as a localization producer at Sony Computer Entertainment America. [2] She is also a founding partner of Blue Startups, a venture accelerator based in Hawaii. [3]
Rogers developed and oversaw the creation of the 2023 motion picture film Tetris as an executive producer [4] that debuted at SXSW and covered the life of her father and the company. [5] [6] Kanon Narumi portrayed a young Rogers in the film.
Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is a Russian-American computer engineer and video game designer who is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.
Tetris is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appropriation of the rights in the late 1980s. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, in 1996 the rights reverted to Pajitnov, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.
Henk Brouwer Rogers is a Dutch video game designer and entrepreneur of partial Indonesian descent. He is known for producing Japan's first major turn-based role-playing video game The Black Onyx, securing the rights to distribute the Russian puzzle video game Tetris on video game consoles where the game found popularity, and as the founder of Bullet-Proof Software and The Tetris Company, which licenses the Tetris trademark. He was instrumental in resolving licensing disputes that brought Tetris to the Game Boy. Today, he is managing director of The Tetris Company.
Minoru Arakawa is a Japanese businessman best known as the founder and former president of Nintendo of America, and the co-founder of Tetris Online, Inc.
Zoey 101 is an American comedy drama television series created by Dan Schneider for Nickelodeon. It aired from January 9, 2005, to May 2, 2008, spanning a total of 61 episodes across four seasons.
EA Mobile Inc. is an American video game development studio of the publisher Electronic Arts (EA) for mobile platforms.
Douglas Eric Liman is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing the films Swingers (1996), Go (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and American Made (2017).
The Tetris Company, Inc. (TTC) is the manager and licensor for the Tetris brand to third parties. It is based in Nevada and is owned by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers. The company is the exclusive licensee of Tetris Holding LLC, the company that owns Tetris rights worldwide.
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987 and has continued growing in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with the interactive track lasting for five days, music for seven days, and film for nine days. There was no in-person event in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austin, Texas; in both years there was a smaller online event instead.
Blue Planet Software Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded by Henk Rogers in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1996. The company was founded as the successor to Bullet-Proof Software Inc. (BPS), founded in 1983 by Rogers in Japan, which closed on 22 February of 2001.
Tetris Online, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher. The company was the exclusive online licensee of Tetris in North America and Europe. It was founded in January 2006 by Nintendo of America founder and former president Minoru Arakawa, video game designer and publisher Henk Rogers and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. Tetris Online, Inc. is the developer of social games Tetris Battle and Tetris Friends. In March 2013, Tetris Online, Inc. laid off 40% of its staff.
Something Ventured is a 2011 documentary film investigating the emergence of American venture capitalism in the mid-20th century. Something Ventured follows the stories of the venture capitalists who worked with entrepreneurs to start and build companies like Apple, Intel, Genentech, Cisco, Atari, Tandem, and others, and looks at the influence of Georges Doriot. It is a full-length independent film which includes interviews with prominent American venture capitalists and entrepreneurs of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, as well as archival photography and footage. The film has aired across the US on local PBS stations as well as on public television in Norway.
Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters is a 2011 American documentary film that follows the lives of several gamers from around the country as they prepare to compete in the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship held in Los Angeles, California. It recounts the development and rise of Tetris as one of the most-played video games of all time, the role it has played in shaping the lives of the gamers it chronicles, the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of former Nintendo World Champion Thor Aackerlund, and the conception and execution of the first-ever Classic Tetris World Championship by gaming enthusiast Robin Mihara.
Taron Egerton is a Welsh actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he performed in stage plays. Egerton gained recognition for his starring role as Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, a spy, in the action comedy films Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).
Zygi Jan Kamasa is a Swedish-British entertainment studio executive and film executive producer.
Josh Greenbaum is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has won an MTV Movie Award, CINE Golden Eagle and Emmy Award. He directed the feature documentary The Short Game, winner of the SXSW Audience Award, which was acquired by Netflix to launch their Originals film division. He also directed Becoming Bond, a documentary about George Lazenby, which won SXSW's Audience Award in the Visions category, as well as the critically acclaimed Too Funny to Fail, a documentary about The Dana Carvey Show. He is also the creator, director and executive producer of Behind the Mask, which earned Hulu its first ever Emmy nomination. He made his narrative feature debut with Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar.
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation is a 2014 non-fiction novel written by Blake J. Harris. It follows businessman Tom Kalinske in his venture as CEO of video game company Sega of America from 1990 to 1996, and details the history of the fierce business competition between Sega and Nintendo throughout the 1990s as well as the internal conflicts that took place between Sega of America and its Japanese parent company, Sega Enterprise. Harris wrote the book in the style of a novel by compiling several interviews with people who were involved with the events, using the information gathered to create a dramatic interpretation of the events. A documentary of the book directed by Harris and Jonah Tulis was released on CBS All Access on September 23, 2020. A miniseries adaptation is in development with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg executive producing with Jordan Vogt-Roberts directing.
Tsunekazu Ishihara is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer and businessman who is the president of The Pokémon Company. Prior to working with the Pokémon series, Ishihara was part of Ape Inc. and worked on titles such as EarthBound, and then years later he founded Creatures Inc.
Tetris is a 2023 biographical thriller film based on true events around the race to license and patent the video game Tetris from Russia in the late 1980s during the Cold War. It was directed by Jon S. Baird and written by Noah Pink. The film stars Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, and Anthony Boyle.
Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., 863 F.Supp.2d 394, was a 2012 American legal case related to copyright of video games, confirming that a game's look and feel can be protected under copyright law. Tetris Holding is a company that holds the copyright to the original Tetris game from 1985 and licenses those rights to game developers. Xio Interactive is a game developer that released Mino in 2009, a mobile game based on the gameplay of Tetris. Mino was downloaded millions of times, and Tetris Holding filed a DMCA notice and eventually a lawsuit against Xio for copyright infringement.
