Kevin Marshall's America
The Google Pac-Man game, which will lead us into our next Great Depression. Hopefully it'll also produce the next Woody Guthrie. This yellow half-circle kills fascists!
Last week, Google did this awesome thing where they marked the 30th Anniversary of “Pac-Man” – a game that for my money is still just as fun as those multi-million dollar shoot-em-ups with 3-D environments and eyebrows that move – by changing their Google logo into a playable version of the game. Twitter and Facebook exploded with cries of “awesome” and “this is the greatest thing ever,” as people of various ages took to the site to see what level they could get to and boast about how unproductive it made them at work.
Yesterday, the backlash started. A blog reported that RescueTime, a company that measures workplace productivity through monitoring software, claims the stunt cost the American economy over 4.82 million wasted man-hours and over $120 million in pay.
To that, I can only say that RescueTime and everyone else who has jumped on this story has woefully over-estimated the effectiveness and productivity of the American worker.
I know suggesting that Americans are easily distracted can get me lynched, particularly in a country where political points are won and lost based on how one plays to “the American worker.”
Firstly, what IS “the American worker” exactly? Is it the guy at the Ford plant? Is it the farmer who toils to feed an entire country and in some cases other countries as well? Is it the longshoreman? Is it the person in retail that spends eight straight hours on his or her feet?
Whatever that cheap, vague phrase may invoke, I can safely say it isn’t the person that sits in front of a computer and has the luxury of screwing around playing Pac-Man.
Okay, I’m baiting. The truth is, this isn’t a knock on the American worker at all. For so long we’ve prided ourself on our model of work and our economy. We’re not Japan, where one’s job duties are so compulsory that slots in a wall are rented out so people can take naps during their lunch break and a bad performance in the workplace can lead to an irrevocable devastation of one’s ego and self-esteem. As such, screwing around on the job is in a very real way a part of our job.
After all, what’s more American than taking an extended break from a laborious task to run from and alternately chase ghosts?
My point is that this is the system we’ve built our lives on. And, to be fair, it’s working alright for us. The fall of the American economy in recent years can be blamed on a variety of factors: our shrinking manufacturing sector, a reliance on a system of living beyond our means, and the bursting of the real estate bubble to name a few. But none of those involve workplace productivity.
The idea that Google throwing up Pac-Man on its homepage somehow hurt our economy is every bit as ridiculous, facetious, and misguided as the idea that the NCAA Tournament brings everything to a halt because of office pools. If someone’s not playing Pac-Man, they’re on Facebook or Twitter. If they’re not on a social media website, they’re visiting a local news website (like right here at The Times Union, which is such a wildly popular time-waster and local resource it was erroneously blamed for spreading viruses at two college campuses some weeks ago). If they’re not visiting a local news website, they’re cruising Craigslist for chicks. If they’re not cruising Craigslist for chicks, they’re e-mailing their friends and family. If they’re not—well, you get the idea.
There’s an argument to be made that it may have perhaps been an additive. That’s fair. But it’s only an additive for those who are unmonitored and have the gumption or lack of responsibility that would be required to play the game to excess. I still say that the idea of Google’s stunt making people do things they normally wouldn’t do is poppycock. Pac-Man fever died years ago.
So the next time you read one of these stories about wasted man-hours, just remember that it’s crap. It’s no different than those junk science articles in news magazines that make weird or outrageous claims like “carrots cause cancer” but are easily debunked given the right research. And remember that wasting time on the internet while at work is every bit as American as apple pie, baseball (and bloggers?), and obsessively tweeting about how the show “Lost” blew your mind this week.
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Now stop reading my blog and get back to work!
SEE ALSO: TU Gamer blog Press Start destroys the American economy has a fun list of games you can play online!
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11 Responses to Did Pac-Man Break America?
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STALK ME
HAHAHA “poppycock”
I know you said you like old man humor, but are you sure you aren’t actually 70 and just look young for your age?
Will – No lie, my family has been saying that I have the soul of an old man ever since I was a toddler. And, in fact, I do often use outdated slang that makes people think I’m some sort of displaced man from the past sent forward in time and adjusting to this new, wonderful, scary world we live in.
In this case, it’s sort of an inside joke with someone that complained to me that they hate that word (poppycokc). I’m hoping they pick up on it so that I can get a rise out of them.
Man, now I’m going to download Pac-Man Championship Edition when I get home.
Tangent: Did Fozzie Bear steal Pac-Man’s wakka. wakka, wakka shitck or was it the other way around? I’d like to do a YouTube comparison video of their material just like Carlos Mencia and Bill Cosby/George Lopez/whatever comedian Mencia most recently ripped off.
Steve – Fozzy Bear pre-dates Pac-Man by 25 years. I’m not sure if he always had the “wakka wakka wakka” catch-phrase, but the latest it would have debuted is 1975, which still beats out Pac-Man by 5 years.
I have to believe the number is over-inflated. I read this on Fast Company and realized that Pac-Man was up for 3 days starting on Friday. If we are talking about the avg American worker then their schedule is Mon-Fri so essentially that lost time was on Friday. As you were saying this is just one more way for us to suck time out of the clock before the bell rings for 5 pm. Certainly managers could be more in tune to what their employees productivity is like if they could only get away from Pac-Man themselves.
Then it’ll be Fozzy jabbing a broken bottle of Wild Turkey into Pac-Man’s face and accusing him of outright theft. You know, it’s kind of funnier that way. Poor Fozzie just can’t catch a break. I’m picturing the meltdown.
“I get emotionally abused by a pair of septuagenarians every show I play. I cry myself to sleep every night. I wake up sore from the aches and pains of driving a studebaker across the country looking for work where ever I can find it. My pores have been permanently clogged with tomato residue and tears. And you look at me with that smug grin on your face and what aught to be my money in your yellow mits. But where’s my Fozzie Fever dance craze and hit single?! WHERE IS IT?! *sob*”
HEYYYYYYY….I didn’t know it was PLAYABLE!! I saw the logo and thought oh..how cool..but I didn’t know that you could actually like play it…DARN.I miss out on all the cool stuff *pouting*
“Workplace productivity” is a myth. It doesn’t take nearly as much time as we make ourselves believe it does to do the things we call work.
i may have underestimated you kevin marshall. this made me laugh out loud: “As such, screwing around on the job is in a very real way a part of our job.” you make some valid points, my friend. well done.
p.s. i heard about pacman on google from twitter. i managed to play one game before someone stopped by my office with a question. i went back to play another game, but then my phone rang. when i went back to the computer i saw i had three new emails. thanks to work, i completely forgot about pacman. i think the real problem is this ‘work’ thing.
I love Google and use all their stuff (Picassa, Gmail, Google Docs, Bloggger). Yes, I’m sure they collect my personal data — but at least tthey’re not assholes about it, like Facebook.
Awesome blog post. Whenever topics of how we spend our time on the Internet, I always think of the quote from Zombieland… “The best part about Zombieland…is no Facebook status updates”
I played the Google pacman instead of hanging out on Facebook. Our attention always goes to the distraction…