Vladimir Pokhilko
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Владимир Похилько
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| Born | Vladimir Ivanovich Pokhilko (1954-04-07)April 7, 1954 |
| Died | September 21, 1998(1998-09-21) (aged 44) |
| Nationality | Soviet Russian, American |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, game designer, psychologist |
| Years active | 1982-1998 |
Vladimir Ivanovich Pokhilko (Russian: Владимир Иванович Похилько[1]) (7 April 1954 – 21 September 1998) was a Soviet-Russian entrepreneur. He was an academic who specialized in human–computer interaction.
Born in Moscow on April 7, 1954, he graduated from the Faculty of Psychology at Moscow State University in 1982. He was a junior researcher at the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University.
A friend of Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, he was the first clinical psychologist to conduct experiments using the game.[2] He played an important role in the subsequent development and marketing of the game, and a 1999 article in the Forbes magazine credited him for "co-inventing the seminal videogame Tetris".[3]
In 1989, he and Pajitnov founded the 3D software technology company AnimaTek in Moscow.[4] While attempting to create software for INTEC (a company they started) that would be made for "people's souls", they developed the idea for El-Fish.[citation needed]
After suffering financial difficulties at his software company, AnimaTek, Pokhilko murdered his wife, Elena Fedotova (38) and their son, Peter (12), by bludgeoning and stabbing them both to death. He then committed suicide by slitting his own throat.[5] Shortly before his death, Pokhilko penned a note. The police initially did not release the content of the note, saying that it was not a suicide note and that they didn't know who authored it.[6] They later determined it was a suicide note and published the content of the note in 1999; it read:[7]
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