经济学人｜Day968

文章来源：《经济学人》Mar 27th 2023 期 Leaders 栏目

随着电子游戏的发展，它们正在吞下媒体

风暴形成

游戏行业对其他行业以及政府都有借鉴意义

Mar 23rd 2023

Warner bros released a new Harry Potter title last month and took $850m in two weeks. That made it the second-most-successful Potter launch in the film studio’s history. But “Hogwarts Legacy”, the title in question, was no movie: it was a video game.

华纳兄弟上月发布了新的《哈利•波特》系列，在两周内获得8.5亿美元收入。这使得它成为电影工作室历史上第二大成功的波特版本。但是《霍格沃茨之遗》这个名字并不是电影，而是一个电子游戏。

Warner’s hit is an example of how gaming is besting older media, both as a business and as a way for people to entertain themselves. Consumers are forecast to spend $185bn on games this year, five times what they will spend at the cinema and 70% more than they will allocate to streamers like Netflix. Once a children’s hobby, gaming has grown up. Console players in their 30s and 40s now outnumber those in their teens and 20s.

华纳的成功是游戏如何击败传统媒体的一个例子，无论是作为一种商业还是作为一种娱乐方式。预计今年消费者将在游戏上花费1850亿美元，是他们在电影院花费的5倍，比他们在Netflix等流媒体上花费的高出70%。游戏曾经是孩子们的爱好，现在已经成熟了。现在，30多岁和40多岁的游戏玩家已经超过了10多岁和20多岁的玩家。

Yet as gaming matures, it is not just rivalling other media. Rather like a ravenous Pac-Man, it is gobbling them up. While such intellectual property as Harry Potter may be finding success in game form, game franchises have themselves become the most in-demand kind of ip in other media. Apple’s “Tetris” movie, due out later this month, is the latest (and perhaps oddest) instance of Hollywood mining games for ideas as audiences tire of comic-book heroes. Amateur creators are doing the same. After music, gaming clips are the biggest content category on YouTube.

不过，随着游戏的成熟，它不仅仅是与其他媒体竞争。游戏像一个贪婪的吃豆人，它正在吞噬它们。虽然《哈利波特》等知识财产可能在游戏形式中获得成功，但游戏特许经营权本身已经成为其他媒体中最受欢迎的IP类型。苹果公司的《俄罗斯方块》电影将于本月晚些时候上映，这是好莱坞挖掘游戏创意的最新(或许也是最奇怪的)例子，因为观众已经厌倦了漫画书中的英雄。业余创作者也在做同样的事情。继音乐之后，游戏剪辑是YouTube上最大的内容类别。


At the same time, audiences are increasingly consuming old media through games. The latest season of “The Walking Dead”, a long-running television drama, took the form of an interactive game on Facebook. Musicians such as Ariana Grande perform concerts in “Fortnite”. The fitness video is giving way to the fitness game. Even social networking is partly migrating to the gaming arena. Platforms like Roblox provide children with a place to play—but also to hang out, chat and shop. In so far as anything resembling a metaverse yet exists, it exists in games.

与此同时，越来越多的观众通过游戏消费旧媒体。长期播出的电视剧《行尸走肉》最新一季在Facebook上以互动游戏的形式出现。爱莉安娜·格兰德等音乐家在《堡垒之夜》中举办音乐会。健身视频正在让位于健身游戏。甚至连社交网络也部分转移到了游戏领域。像《Roblox》这样的平台为孩子们提供了一个玩耍的地方——同时也提供了闲逛、聊天和购物的地方。就目前存在的任何类似元宇宙的东西而言，它存在于游戏中。

Expect more growth. Smartphones put a powerful console in people’s pockets and unlocked hours of playtime on the commute and at the back of the lecture hall. The next boost may come from smart tvs and streaming, which bring high-fidelity games to living rooms without the need for dedicated hardware.

预计会有更多增长。智能手机将一个强大的游戏机装进了人们的口袋，在上下班的路上和演讲厅的后面，人们可以享受几个小时的游戏时间。下一次增长可能来自智能电视和流媒体，它们可以在不需要专用硬件的情况下将高保真游戏带到客厅。

New business models are another source of growth. Gaming’s latest boom was propelled by free-to-play games, which suck users in before monetising them with ads and in-game purchases. A new phase of expansion is coming from game-library subscriptions, which already show signs of increasing consumption and accelerating discovery, much as the cable bundle did in television. These new distribution mechanisms and business models promise more choice for consumers—which is why regulators should allow Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a big gamemaker whose titles Microsoft would make available for streaming and subscription.

新的商业模式是另一个增长来源。游戏行业最近的繁荣是由免费游戏推动的，这种游戏先吸引用户，然后通过广告和游戏内购买来盈利。一个新的扩张阶段来自游戏库订阅，目前已经显示出消费增加和发现加速的迹象，就像有线电视捆绑服务在电视领域的表现一样。这些新的分销机制和商业模式为消费者提供了更多的选择——这就是为什么监管机构应该允许微软以690亿美元收购动视暴雪的原因，微软将使这家大型游戏制造商的游戏可用于流媒体和订阅。

All this holds lessons for other industries—chiefly that, if you are in media, you need to be in gaming. Apple and Netflix are scrambling to complement their streaming offerings with games. Others are already there. In August Sony Pictures will release “Gran Turismo”, a film based on a Sony game which features songs by artists from Sony Music. Media firms that ignore gaming risk being like those that decided in the 1950s to sit out the tv craze.

所有这些都为其他行业提供了教训，主要是，如果你从事媒体行业，你就需要在游戏行业。苹果和网飞正争先恐后地用游戏来补充他们的流媒体服务。其他公司已经有了。今年8月，索尼影业将发行一部改编自索尼游戏的电影《GT赛车》，该电影由索尼音乐公司的艺术家演唱。忽视游戏的媒体公司面临的风险就像那些在20世纪50年代决定不参与电视热潮的公司一样。

Governments should also pay attention. Their main concern so far has been whether games rot young minds (almost certainly not, especially if playing diverts them from social media). As gaming grows, bigger questions loom. Film and television, the engines of popular culture in the 20th century, are dominated by Hollywood. The contest in new media is more open. Western governments are waking up to the implications of the world’s hottest social-media app, TikTok, being Chinese-owned. Next they might consider what it means that China also made two of last year’s three highest-grossing mobile games.

各国政府也应予以关注。到目前为止，他们主要担心的是游戏是否会腐蚀年轻人的思想(几乎可以肯定不会，尤其是如果玩游戏分散了他们对社交媒体的注意力)。随着游戏行业的发展，更大的问题也逐渐显现。电影和电视是20世纪流行文化的引擎，由好莱坞主导。新媒体的竞争更加开放。西方开始意识到世界上最热门的社交媒体应用TikTok被中国人拥有的影响。接下来，他们可能会考虑，去年最畅销的三款手机游戏中有两款是中国制作的，这意味着什么。

When video games were just electronic toys, this might not have mattered. But as games expand and spill into other formats, it is becoming clear that whoever dominates gaming is going to wield clout in every form of communication. In every sense, the future of the media is in play.■

当电子游戏还只是电子玩具时，这可能并不重要。但随着游戏向其他形式扩展，谁主导游戏业，谁就能在各种交流形式中发挥影响力，这一点越来越明显。从任何意义上讲，未来媒体的竞赛已经开始了。■