I [heart] Pac-Man – But I forgot
I am still excited about Google’s Pac-Man game last week. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, come out from under that rock and read on.
Each day Google changes the artwork on their homepage to reflect some sort of historic significance. Last week marked the 30th anniversary of the creation of Pac-Man. So for one day only, people were not only greeting by an image of the retro game but also were able to play it onscreen using their keyboard. Those that explored further realized that Ms. Pac-Man could join in by pressing the ‘Insert Coin’ button a second time.
So it was a bundle of fun but some would say too much fun.
“Those estimates come from RescueTime, a firm specialising in time management software, which examined its users’ web habits on Friday and discovered that they spent an average of 36 extra seconds on Google as some were sucked into the classic arcade game.
While 36 seconds might not sound much, it adds up quickly when you consider that Google had 504m unique users during the day. RescueTime reckons there were an extra 4.82m hours spent on the page, above and beyond the usual 33.6m hours visitors spend on Google daily. If all those people had an average “cost” of $25 per hour, the tally comes out at $120,483,800.”
www.guardian.co.uk
Don’t worry, its not too late to try it out (or continuing with your addiction) as Google has been kind enough to archive the game for you. Play it here.