Henk Rogers - Tetris Founder | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:07Hank, thank you so much for joining me. Oh, you're so welcome. You flew in especially from New York to come and do this, yeah? Yeah, you know, when I heard about it, I thought, yeah, this is going to be really good. Well, thank you. Tell me, who is Hank Rogers? Well, okay, so Hank Rogers is a computer game designer turned entrepreneur, publisher, father of four, grandfather of nine, and now I'm a climate warrior fighting climate change. You've still got a major glint in your eye. There's so much you've already done. You could have stopped. We were just talking about Hawaii before we started filming, right?

0:40But you're not there now. You're talking with me. What's driving you? What's keeping you going? You know, there's so many things that need to be fixed in the world. And I feel that, you know, I've gained some, how can I say, some abilities in my career. And I need to use those abilities to do something good. That's brilliant. So what's the purpose? The abilities along with experience, right? You've got so much maturity perspective. What is driving you in terms of the purpose? It was like a month after I sold my company, I found myself in the back of an ambulance with 100 % blockage of the widow maker.

1:1495 % of the people who have that happen to them die. I obviously survived in that ambulance. The first thing I said was, you've got to be kidding me. I haven't spent any of the money yet. You know, I just sold my company. All this graft. All this output. I was like, what the hell? And the second thing, I said, no, I'm not going. I still have stuff to do. and in the recovery room after I have two stents in the recovery room I was thinking about what did I mean by that I was you know I was obviously near death and so I decided to figure out what is it that's going to me off if I didn't do something about it by the real and or the next end of my life and so that I decided to find my bucket list and well stuff wasn't like I had already made enough money so my wife didn't need me anymore and my kids were all finished with college so they didn't need me anymore so i'd done the normal stuff that you would think you want to do before you retire you cannot say normal there is nothing normal about your story at all right i've watched a movie about you and i want to i want to go to that actually you know the risks you took you know if anyone has watched tetris and knows your story and we'll talk about that but the risks you took signing up your in-laws' land, putting everything on the line, which included your health, your own safety.

2:33I want to talk about that because I'm an entrepreneur. I've taken some pretty calculated risks in my time. So I've got perspective. But watching the movie, and I know it's Hollywood, but it's based on your journey. It was a little Hollywood involved. Come on. They took two years of my life, squeezed it into two hours. But you're not going to say you didn't take those risks? No risk, no reward, is what I say. If you're not ready to take risk, get a job and have the security and get the paycheck and don't think about anything. But if you have a drive, get outside the box. Once you're outside the box, don't get back in the box.

3:13Stay out there and do something. So you never felt the need to... You'd accumulated a lot of money into this, right? You could have then gone back into a box, not to get a job, but just to not keep putting yourself out there. But you didn't have a moment where you're like, that was exhausting. That's been so stressful. I need to have an easier life. It feels like, you know, you've just told me your schedule, previous and upcoming, right? It's mental. So I took two weeks after I had my heart attack. I took two weeks off. Is that the only two weeks you've ever taken off, right? That was it. And that's when, but that wasn't even two weeks off.

3:46That sounds like it was where you were evaluating your goals. Well, no, I mean, like the doctor said, don't do anything for two weeks. I thought, okay, fine. You know, I couldn't go to work, so to speak. And that's where you were plotting and planning your next. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so you're not doing anything. Some people get a parasol, sit on a beach, and switch off. I find that so difficult to do. Like, if you gave me a beach and said, sit here for a couple of hours, I would go nuts. Yeah, I can tell. Hyperactive, hyper-focused. I want to do something. I would be looking like, what's behind the beach?

4:20show or you know i might build a sandcastle or whatever but i mean i would do something i wouldn't but but going back to tetris you know you you you broke so many rules you you had to and you chose to as well so effectively at times you put yourself in danger you know that's one of the things that i wanted to ask you actually you know it was covered in the film in hollywood style right but there were times when you were somewhere you shouldn't and then particularly you know in russia which was not a safe place to be to achieve a goal. I was in the Soviet Union, and I was in a total adventure game because I didn't know anybody.

4:55I just arrived there. Basically, I looked at it as an adventure game, and it was. Trying to find, you know, like, how do I find Elorg? I couldn't find. There was no information. There was an information desk in my hotel. I went to the information desk. I said, Electronork Techno, I even wrote it down, and then I said, oh, maybe it's under Elorg, yellow. And I said, come on, there's got to be, and she didn't speak a word of English. This is the Intourist Hotel. You would expect somebody to speak something else besides Russian. And so she hands me like, bonk, like the telephone book. And I open it up and it's all in Cyrillic.

5:38It's like, come on, this is useless. But to you, that's just an obstacle, right? You aren't going to stop. You're always going to get around it. I can tell you that the relentless resilience that you've got to ultimately achieve an outcome where you Breaking those rules Finding a way through and you're still doing that now, right? I want to I want to flip to the the kind of green energy Climate sort of crisis that you're trying to influence. I was in the recovery room and I Was reading the newspaper in the back of the newspaper was a little article It said, oh, by the way, we're going to kill all the coral in the world by the end of the century.

6:14Now, I moved to Hawaii when I was 18 from New York City to Hawaii. So I'm on the beach for a year surfing and diving every day. I fell in love with the ocean. What 18-year-old wouldn't? And so that's so callous to say that we're going to kill all the coral in the world, you know, by the end of the century. What's causing that? Ocean acidification. What's causing that? Carbon dioxide. What's causing that? We are. Okay, mission number one, obvious. and the use of carbon-based fuel. And because Hawaii was my home at the time, I said, well, I'm going to end it in Hawaii first because I believe we've got to clean up our room before we ask somebody else to clean up their room.

6:51I had no idea how to go about any of this. And I started... Sounds familiar. Yeah. It works for you. Yeah. But I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it. That's it. Brilliant. And that's really how we all need to start every journey. So can you elaborate on that? So from not knowing what to do, but knowing that there's a really big mission there, which is a global mission that so many people are aligned with. But many people are trying and not managing to influence it. What are you doing that's different? First of all, I found the biggest use of carbon-based fuel in Hawaii. So Hawaii at the time imported$5 billion a year of oil and$1 billion of coal.

7:2830 % of the oil goes to making jet fuel, 30 % ground transportation. but 40 % or$2 billion of oil and$1 billion of coal goes to make electricity. Electricity. Okay, so I said, first of all, we've got to stop using fossil fuel to make electricity. And so we tried everything. I started a foundation, Blue Planet Foundation. Bad name for the organization because foundation sounds like we give away money. We didn't. We don't. You know, I put money in my own money every year to keep it going. We tried everything. Our claim to fame is in 2015, we passed a law in Hawaii that says Hawaii has to go 100 % renewable energy for electricity by 2045.

8:18What that law does is it means no one is going to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure. Just protected infrastructure. And because it won't be amortized by 2045. So nobody would consider doing that. And that is the first step. Forces innovation, right? Forces the clever minds to be. And it changes the utility from saying, no, we can't. No, we can't. No, we can't. To, hey, we actually have to think about this. And six months after we passed that legislation, they came up, public said, we've looked into it and we figured it out. We can actually do this by 2040. And I mean, that was a sea change.

8:58I mean, right there with the electric company saying that they could do it from it's impossible. And after that, we changed the business model of the utility so they make more money by switching to renewables. Today, we're at 36 percent renewable energy. We're on track. And when you listen to the utility speak now, they sound just like us. So they're aligned. We're all aligned. The people, the politicians, the utility, everybody's aligned. That's huge. And so once that happened, once that started to happen, we understood it. It moved across the country. Fifteen other states have that same mandate, starting with California, but also including New York, Illinois.

9:41Over 50 percent of the people in the U.S. now live with a mandate that said they have to go 100 percent renewable energy by somewhere around 2045. So you're actually having a massive influence on something that affects all of us from a multi-generation point of you coming through right and what would you say if I asked you from a legacy point of view When I'm going to bring Tetris back in which is how how we would all kind of know you to this point I'm learning about this green energy sort of things now Yeah, if you were to be taken off the planet in 10 years time Is it talking about Tetris and the huge numbers there or is it about that?

10:18Yeah, it's about climate I want people to remember me about climate. That's your legacy. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because you've been able to do this through pursuing the entrepreneurial endeavors you had and all the risks you took to now be able to give so much back. Yeah. Which actually must be quite fulfilling because you put some serious graft and effort in and now you're in a position where you can financially influence, but also going back to how you ducked and dived and nothing's going to stop you. What a person to have influencing our potential future of the planet. I think young people, a lot of young people, specifically gamers, who have that drive to actually the epic win.

11:02It's called an epic win. And they all strive for the epic win. You know, that kid that beat Tetris a couple of months ago? Epic win. He was so like, yeah, we did it. And that's what I need young people to understand. And we need to have an epic win and fix climate change. That's the epic win. We also need role models. And that's exactly what you're doing there, right? You are a role model. And actually, it joins up gaming. It's often associated as a young person's game. I'm 47. I had a Game Boy. I played Tetris at school. And I'm not just saying that. I literally, and I know how good it was. And then you looked up and all your mates were doing it.

11:40A bit like, well, it's like now when you look up and everyone's on their phones and social media. But that's what started that whole thing. But role models, do you see yourself as that? Because you are. I don't think of myself as a role model, but I realize that I am. I've always been. I'm the oldest of 15. I did not know that. I've been a role model for my siblings and then a role model for my children and then a role model for the people that work for me in my various companies. So I don't actually think of myself as a role model, but I I don't do anything like ridiculous that would make you know My role model wouldn't do that, you know that kind of thing.

12:20I get it. You're leading by example And you've got a book that's come out. Yeah How much of your book is about the journey that we all would know from the film and that sort of got you to where you are now? And how much of the book is then going into what you're doing now? The book is mostly my computer game career understood and so it starts with me how did i get in computers how did i get into gaming you know what's my early career so yes there's a lot of it a lot of my computer game career has to do with tetris and so you'll find that you know everything it started i wrote the book because of the movie because the movie has so much hollywood in it it's like no you know this the story is I would say at least as good in reality as it was in Hollywood and you know you just can't take a career of like I don't know 30 years and squeeze it into two hours and really get the message across and so yeah if you want to know what really happened read the book it's called The Perfect Game.

13:26What are the big differences that potentially sound like there was a little bit of grating there is there anything that could have been done differently or better that would have made you more pleased at the film? I'm just picking up on the fact that there's a little bit there that, you know, you've written the book that tells the real story. Yeah. So, but, you know, how much of it was Hollywood changing things? Yeah, it was Hollywood changing things. But, you know, I can tell you about the first time I saw the movie. First of all, I read the script. I worked on the script. They would let me change the things that had to do with Moscow in 1989, that kind of stuff but they wouldn't let me touch the Hollywood stuff you know like car chase and sleeping with the interpreter and all that that was that was Hollywood it's good to know it's it's Hollywood and it's fine because they what they had to do is they had to take this year and a half long saga and squeeze it into two hours and so what's missing in the movie is what I'm doing now yeah well I'm really glad we've been able to talk about which is really super interesting which is much more important than the movie.

14:27And, you know, frankly speaking, when the first time I watched the movie, I cried several times. And I cried about things that never happened in real life. So you were emotionally invested in it. Yes. That's good. Because it is entertaining. I watched it with my wife and she really enjoyed it. She knew I was going to be talking with you today. And she enjoyed it as a story. And we, again, talked about it afterwards and she was just like, he's an animal. So to know that, I've already repeated it, to know that you're doing something so important important is inspiring. I want to just touch on computer games.

14:59You know, I was the kid that played Tetris growing up and countless people now grew up and computer games are multifaceted. You know, you can immerse yourself into gaming now with Fortnite. And so where do you sit with it and what involvement do you still have in gaming? When I started my game career that I would never work on a game that I didn't want my children to play. And that's a simple rule of thumb because there's so many violent games out there and would I want my children to play I don't know Counter-Strike not really I know they have and I don't forbid them to do it to do it but I wouldn't consciously help that side of the business move forward I think that um the where the gaming industry has gone is like amazing you know it's grown it's outgrown the movie business right it's outgrown the movie business you know how big is the movie we should be having Oscars you know That's true.

15:50Yeah, it is true because the business is that big. And, you know, that's... The revenues are there. The revenues have surpassed movies. But we need to have a little bit of, how can I say, a little bit of like what are we doing to our children in that space? It's really good. It should be something. It's really interesting what you said. Just on that, actually, there's an addictiveness that goes with games. You could say there's an addictiveness with Tetris. I remember what it was like to try and put it down. And you'd have a really good role and you'd get a really high scoring. And then you would end, and you'd put it, or you'd be happy if you'd put it down.

16:27And then there's this whole like, and you go back to it. And we now know that whether it's social media or gaming companies are fighting for your attention. So there's an addictiveness that goes in. You could argue that blights all games. Did you know, I remember reading and seeing in the film, you sort of elaborated that the bank manager almost took himself off and you said it in the book disappeared for like three days when it was released he's playing the game that actually happened yeah well i mean it was in your book that's why i happened yeah yeah where do you stand with the addictive side of things and relating that to tetris you know television is addictive football is addictive they're all addictive they're all addictions we want to do them and if you if you go back in time like a couple hundred years or a hundred years ago we were preparing our children for a lifetime of physical labor and so sports are really important be healthy and strong but now we are preparing our children for a lifetime of mental labor you know be in in that computer understand the computer world and games are a window into that world in the future games are immersive but so will work will be immersive in the same way yeah And so the children who actually play computer games will have a big advantage over those who don't.

17:47It's really interesting. I don't look at it as a bad thing. No, no. It is. I just wanted to hear it from you because I never felt like it was an unhealthy thing for me to do. And here's something as well. A good friend of mine I went to school with who was equally playing games found out that fighter pilots would play computer games, particularly the fighting games not not the hey they went around but the sort of Mortal Kombat fighting games because of the combinations of moves that would be put in and it was stimulating their brain Which of course oh, it's more than that. It's more than that you know recently there was this I watched this video about the Ukrainian in the in the It's not even a tank.

18:28It's a personnel carrier. Yeah, and they took out a Russian tank and how did you do that as well i played the game and in the game i targeted their their they have like a camera thing on top just hit that thing over and over and over and over again so that they can't see wow and so he actually learned something yeah how to fight the uh that was the bradley the bradley took out a a russian tank and yeah so these things are simulations are so accurate you know race car drivers i was just about to say race simulator they're in the simulator And they get to a track. They've never, ever, ever raced that before physically.

19:06And they're on the lap times straight away. They know exactly when to break and corner and all that. Yeah. So it does have a role to play, if you like, as well as that. Because that was where I was going from flipping it as a negative addictive, actually, if you are doing something that is benefiting you. And that's sort of where I was sort of going with that. If you think about exercise machines, like a running machine, what a waste of time that is. You know, like, what are you doing? spending hours in you know lifting weights or or running but you could say that's all a waste of time you're building up muscles there you're never going to use you know that kind of that kind of bodybuilding are you serious that's interesting so so you could say all of that is a waste of time but you're actually getting healthy yeah and so it's not a waste of time not at all and you look super healthy you look like you keep in shape and look after yourself you have had at times in your life no time for that going back to building up tetris and so on and you're active and busy now you just told me you said you were flying out tomorrow night what are you doing to look after yourself both physically but also mentally physically i i walk a lot i live in new york most of the time so in new york i'm walking and playing table tennis whenever i have a couple of hours and then i'll hire a coach and play table tennis and when i'm in hawaii my brothers are all playing pickleball.

20:28So I'm playing pickleball in Hawaii or hiking by my ranch. I have a 1300 foot elevation hill behind and I climb that hill once a week when I'm there. Mental health, I just don't take stress. Sorry, what's the point of stress? So people always ask me like, how can you travel so much? You know, on this trip, I'm actually from New York to London, in London to Abu Dhabi, to Tokyo, to Hawaii, to Seattle, to San Francisco, back to New York. That's a typical trip for me. And I was once at an airport and my flight was canceled and we all lined up to get rescheduled. And there's an old man who walked up to the front of the line and started yelling at the lady.

21:19And he was turning red. And I said, I mean, this guy is going to have a heart attack and I made up my mind that I was never going to be that guy I was never going to be that guy I can't imagine you being anywhere close to that and then and then I then I the decision that I made that day was that I was never going to take stress from travel no matter what happened you don't you lose my luggage it's fine I'll get my I get more luggage uh miss my plane there's another plane uh you don't have my vegetarian meal fine no problem and ever since travel has been like stressless I get on a plane and I just enjoy myself it's a conscious decision to not let it switch you out yeah and then that that way of life is actually permeated the rest of my life as well what's the point of getting bent out of shape about anything I play to you you know I love it without trying to stress you out now the mission you're on to better the planet and promote the green energy you're gonna need to be dealing with politics you already have been in Hawaii and now and then moving that out to other states but it feels to me like your mission is more global yeah so again politics is potentially a stressful place to be where there's agendas there's blockades that even Hank potentially isn't quite sure how to navigate how are you going about that because you're on a mission to make massive changes against people that are politically not aligned so let's start with the overall picture it's the United Nations doing the COPS and the Paris Agreement.

22:53So the Paris Agreement, all the heads of state got together and said, we're going to do this. And first of all, this and the Paris Agreement doesn't go far enough to fix climate change. And second of all, nobody's on track for even that. So I don't have high hopes for the top-down approach. It's got to be a bottom-up approach. So what we did in Hawaii is we first got the people on our side. We had children go door to door and exchange 300 ,000 light bulbs just to get awareness going. We had other junior high school students draw on sidewalk where high tide would be in a one meter rise in sea level.

23:32That's the minimum sea level rise predicted by the IPCC. It's not the United Nations. It's the United People. And once the people get on your side, they push the politicians. And that's the way it works. It doesn't work the other way. That's community. It works this way, yes. It's a community. So actually what you need, anyone watching, listening to this can ultimately get involved in this at some point when you're trying to engage the community in the different ways, right? It's when we, the people, demand that we're switching to some other energy source when we stop buying internal combustion engine cars.

24:07Can you scale that? I mean, I guess that would be using social media. That's exactly, that's why I'm here. Understood. I'm with you now. I love that. So what can the people do to align with the mission? Because, I mean, why would we not want that? I've got two daughters, 13 and 15. They're my legacy, right? They're growing up. They love snorkeling. They love the oceans. Make decisions in your life that help make the world a better place. You know, if you have a choice between plastic or porcelain, choose porcelain. If you have a chance, whatever your choice is, you have all these little choices that you can make.

24:43I stopped eating beef in Hawaii. My ranch, my house, off-grid, I have electric vehicles that I only charge at the ranch or at the house. So my transportation, ground transportation, is zero, basically. It's solar. Maybe it's because I've made some money in the computer game business that I'm able to be ahead of everybody else in terms of that. Just like flat screen TVs used to cost$10 ,000 or 10 ,000 pounds. Now they cost 600 bucks at Costco. So renewable energy is going that way as well. Things are going to get cheap and more affordable. And then people can make the choice. I think renewable energy is already much cheaper.

25:32In Hawaii, for example, electricity used to cost, The cost to the utilities, 25 cents per kilowatt hour for oil. It's 8 cents for wind and solar. If you add batteries, which storage, now it's up to 12 cents. It's half the cost. And so we changed the business model from them making 10 % on the price of oil, which is 2.5 cents, to, okay, you can make 3 cents on the price of renewable. That makes them more money. Yeah. And that makes them more happy. More incentivized. Incentivized, yes. Smart. It's really smart. On that, there's so much that you could point to in your life that's been successful.

26:09And I wish you absolutely every success with what you're trying to achieve there. But with maturity and perspective sitting here now, how do you define success? Well, first of all, if I could get all the jurisdictions in the world to decide to fix climate change. I mean, that's just a decision. It's a mindset. It's a conscious. It's just a decision. I'm going to do this. I mean, all the leaders and people in leadership position, if you can make that decision, you will go down in history as being the one who made that decision. But eventually, all the people are going to need that decision to happen.

26:50And the sooner we make that decision, the better world we leave for our children. Yes, 100%. But talking of sort of children and bringing it back to kind of computer games, a lot of people watching and listening to this will have that association of Tetris and that sort of overlord of gaming. Anyone aspirational, whether they're a youngster or pivoting in life and would love to be in that industry, it's changed so much in the years you've been part of it. What advice would you give to them? If you want to do something, do it. If you look at the original movie industry, if you look at the silent movies way back when, it's kind of cute, but look what it is today.

27:32You can go into the movie industry and do so many different things. The industry has grown. The same thing with the computer game industry. It's grown. What's your part? You can be a designer. You can be an artist. You can be a musician. You can be a marketer. There's all these different things that are going on. So make your mark with it. Because you were a disruptor, right? You came in and you didn't follow the rules. You didn't do what everyone else had done. And look where that got you. Well, and frankly speaking, if you want to be really successful, you've got to do something that other people aren't doing.

28:09If other people are doing it, then somebody else is making the money, not you. Yeah. I knew before we started talking that I would have a thousand questions and we wouldn't be long enough. And that's where we've got to. but I have so enjoyed talking to you. You are an inspiration and what you're trying to achieve now, I wish you all the best with Hank. And I know that you've got such a crazy schedule. So to fit me in and fill me today, it's a super privilege. So what I'm trying to achieve is the wrong word. What I'm going to achieve. 100%. I should have thought I was talking to you, right? No, Hank, 100%.

28:39Yeah, so people ask me if I have hope. I do not have hope. I have determination. You're a legend. Yes. Because we're totally going to fix this. Yeah. well you've got my full support anything I can ever do to help you I will and thank you so much for talking to me thank you cheers