This article was originally featured on The Conversation. After 13-year-old Willis Gibson became the first human to beat the original Nintendo version of Tetris, he dedicated his special win to his father, who passed away in December 2023. The Oklahoma teen beat the game by defeating level after level until he reached the “kill screen”–that is, the moment when the Tetris artificial intelligence taps out in exhaustion, stopping play because its designers never wrote the code to advance further. Before Gibson, the only other player to overcome the game’s AI was another AI. For any parent who has despaired over their children sinking countless hours into video games, Gibson’s victory over the cruel geometry of Tetris stands as a bracing corrective. Despite the stereotypes, most gamers are anything but lazy. And they’re anything but mindless. The world’s top players can sometimes serve as reminders of the best in us, with memorable achievements that range from the heroic to the inscrutably weird. The perfect run “Speedrunning” is a popular gaming subculture in which players meticulously optimize …