Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
August 2018
- When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
- Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
- London Black Cabs Helped Uber Grow
- Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
- Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start
July 2018
- Fear This Instead Of Failure
- Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
- A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
- The Tardy Student And The Unsolvable Problem
- Fixing Potholes Through Graffiti
June 2018
- A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
- US Army Embraces Mistakes
- Blocking A Hymn
- Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
- [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed
May 2018
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
- Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
- This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
- 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
- MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process
April 2018
- Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
- Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
- Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
- Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
- Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged
March 2018
Pac-Man Fever
The Pac-Man game hit a milestone. Google’s homepage had a playable version of the hit Pac-Man game in honor of it’s 30th birthday (which caused some companies to ban Google’s website due to decreased productivity.) Where’s the failure?
Photo © Flickr User Dustin J McClure
It happened thirty years ago. When Namco first released the game in 1980 in Japan, nobody paid much attention. Pac-Man was also brought to an American conference, but distributors overlooked the product. They were much more excited about something called Rally-X, which has vanished to the coin return of video game history.
Yet Pac-Man took off with players. It eventually sold over 350,000 arcade units, becoming the most popular game of all time. Why did this product start out a veritable failure and then become so successful?
Most video game historians agree that Pac-Man was such a radical departure from games like Space Invaders that American audiences found it refreshing. Instead of shooting, your character was eating. Instead of going after the bad guys, you spent most of your time avoiding them.
No one would have predicted Pac-Man’s success based on it’s lackluster release or weird style of play. Failure is often the precursor to success.
