How Pac-Man Changed Games And Culture

The iconic game celebrates its 33rd anniversary on May 22. Technologist and gaming expert Chris Melissinos explains how it changed everything from arcade culture to video game design
 

Think about what Pac-Man meant at the time it was introduced. Suddenly, you had a top 40 song, “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner & Garcia. You had board games by Milton Bradley, cartoons, cereal, clothing. You had all of these things that Pac-Man was attached to, and what you were really observing at the time was society trying to figure out: what does this mean in popular culture? We’d never had a game that absolutely ensnared the masses of society like Pac-Man did.
 
.Most games were about annihilation [at the time Pac-Man was released]. Most games were World War-themed or aggressive games. Here was a game that was none of those things. There was no weapon to fire. It was: outrun your pursuers until you are of sufficient strength that you can then chase them. And what it really wound up doing was it changed the social dialogue around arcades. Now, for the first time, you had women in arcades, and you had kids--both boys and girls--in these arcades that were typically full of older teens and adult males. It fundamentally changed the dialogue and the social contract that arcades had made. It made it more permissible for everyone to be included in arcade culture.

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