Games people play.

Once, pac man and space invaders were found in every pub and the line up to play at the end of the night could be a dangerous place, depending on the alcohol levels of the participants. When we moved from the arcades of pinball machines and jingle jangle music to computer generated kiosks in the watering holes, convenience was hailed and we were happy. We couldn't think of a better way to have a few beers and still enjoy the benefits of saving the planet from alien invaders. The arcade allure has long since disappeared, to be replaced by the arcade in our hands. The personal arcade where we win all the time, don't have to line up and never get into a fight to use the machine.

Only now the arcade is filled with even more games than we could have ever imagined. All those years ago, the Who's Pinball Wizard sang about addiction, an addiction that today sees people playing games 25% of the time they are online. Good news for the app developers or the share holders of Zynga but not so much for companies, who's employees enjoy online access throughout the work day. Where pong once entranced us with a dot moving across a green screen, Angry Birds of all species, now hold sway over every hand held device on the planet. As goofy as the games are, and many people describe them as stupid, the addiction is a problem for many in the work force.

Popularity that used to be gauged by the number of machines physically set up in an arcade, is today socially chattered about with access to hundreds of millions of players and no longer requires getting up from the bar to play. Any top grossing app list will show birds, fruit ninjas, zombie farms, smurf villages, bejewelled, draw and multi layered Texas poker games taking place while distracting people from their workaday lives.

The first really addictive hand held game for many was Tetris and it's falling walls helped sell 70 million units for the game boy. Twenty five years later Angry Birds started flying out of Finland to become the world's most maddening distraction while being downloaded 700 million times and eating up 200 million minutes every day. The web used to be the greatest distraction invented but thanks to Mr Jobs and the iPhone we now have hand held access to more stupidity than Stephen Hawkins can imagine in a life time.

Yet many pundits and analysts are predicting the gamification time we are spending on mobile phones will soon see commerce adapt the model to sell products and services we will engage with from the palm of our hands. Who knew that space invaders would make way for selling platforms based on our need to sling shoot birds into pigs or that zombie farms could be used to sell more hamburgers?

It may be a distraction now and you may need to hide it from the boss but soon you'll be able to say you are working in e-commerce. How much fun will that be?