文章注释
When the estimated size of the global games market in 2015 comes up in conversation, Toru Iwatani has to write the figure $78bn down on a piece of paper.
当我们谈到2015年全球游戏市场的预估规模时，岩谷彻(Toru Iwatani)不得不把780亿美元这串数字写在一张纸上。
The man who invented Pac-Man, the most successful arcade game in history and among the most widely-recognised digital icons on the planet, stares again at the number, before mentally converting it into yen. It still seems wrong, he says. “Are there too many zeroes?”
这位《吃豆人》(Pac-Man)游戏的创始人又看了一遍这串数字，然后将它心算成日元。他说，看起来还是不对，“后面的零会不会太多了？”《吃豆人》是历史上最成功的街机游戏，也是地球上知名度最高的数字图标之一。
The question, asked in the depths of a tiny, claustrophobic office in Tokyo Polytechnic University, is only half-joking. In the 35 years since the release ofPac-Man, the industry spawn?ed by Mr Iwatani’s yellow glutton has generated fabulous wealth but left many of its greatest Japanese pioneers no better off than any other salarymen.
在东京工艺大学(Tokyo Polytechnic University)一间狭小、幽闭的办公室里提出的这一问题只是半开玩笑。自《吃豆人》问世35年来，岩谷彻的黄色吃豆人衍生出的产业创造出了巨大财富，但不少最伟大的日本先驱者境况并不比一般的打工者好多少。
That is not necessarily a bad thing, he says. The creative environment in which Mr Iwatani was allowed to wallow at game developer Namco back in the 1980s should, he believes, become the model for games design in the era of the smartphone.
岩谷彻说，这未必是一件坏事。他认为，自己上世纪80年代在游戏开发公司南梦宫(Namco)被允许沉迷于的那种创意环境，已成为智能手机时代游戏设计的模式。
“The beauty of Pac-Man is that anyone who plays it immediately knows what is going on in the game. That is why it still works today if you download it on a smartphone. Thirty-five years ago, we were limited by the power of the CPU [processor], now we don’t have those constraints, but game makers need to be thinking about what made the older games so good.”
“《吃豆人》之美在于，任何上手玩的人都能立刻明白这款游戏是怎么回事。这就是为什么如果你今天用智能手机下载它的话，还仍然可以玩。35年前，我们受到CPU（处理器）运算能力的限制，现在我们不再有这些限制，但游戏制作商需要思考一个问题：是什么让这些老款游戏如此有魔力？”
He pulls out a Pac-Man branded iPhone to show his two favourites of the moment — Jewel Mania and Puzzle & Dragons . The latter, produced by Japanese company GungHo, has been downloaded more than 35m times in Japan, the equivalent of a quarter of the population. The smartphone, he says, is doing today what Pac-Mandid all those years ago: the games that are successful thrive on their simplicity, gameplay and their ability to broaden, very suddenly, the universe of games players.
他取出一部贴有《吃豆人》标识的iPhone，展示自己现在最喜欢的两款游戏——《宝石迷域》(Jewel Mania)与《智龙迷城》(Puzzle & Dragons)。日本游戏企业GungHo开发的《智龙迷城》在日本已被下载超过3500万次，相当于该国人口的四分之一。他说，智能手机如今正在扮演《吃豆人》当年的角色：成功的游戏要依靠自身的简洁性、可玩性以及极快扩展游戏玩家群体的能力。
Companies such as Nintendo, which has resisted until recently any idea of making its famous Super Mario and Mario Kart available on mobile phones, must embrace the new frontier, he says. “Watching grannies playing video games on their phones on the train is great. It is what I was trying to do all along with Pac-Man.”
他说，一些公司——如直到不久以前一直拒绝将其著名的《超级马里奥》(Super Mario)和《马里奥赛车》(Mario Kart)搬到手机上的任天堂(Nintendo)——必须拥抱新的领域。“看到阿婆在火车上用手机玩电子游戏令人喜悦。这就是我一直想借助《吃豆人》实现的现实。”
Over the next three decades at Nam?co, and a career in which he produced more than 50 games, he pushed the theme of easy accessibility. Alpine Racer and Time Crisiswere particularly critical in bringing players into the heart of the game by using physical movement in?stead of a complex set of controls.
在岩谷彻为南梦宫工作的30年、制作了超过50款游戏的职业生涯中，他始终力推易操作的主题。《高山滑雪》(Alpine Racer)与《化解危机》(Time Crisis)利用肢体动作（而非一组复杂的控制）把玩家带入游戏核心，在这方面起了尤为关键的作用。
Having retired in 2007 from what was by then Bandai Namco, the father of Japanese video games is now a professor of game development. He tea?ch?es the sec?rets of design and character to students only a little younger than he was when the idea of Pac-Man— according to corporate mythology — hit him in a Yokohama pizza restaurant in 1979.
岩谷彻2007年从当时的万代南梦宫(Bandai Namco)退休，这位日本电子游戏之父现在是一名游戏开发专业的教授。（万代南梦宫是由游戏开发公司南梦宫与玩具制造商万代(BANDAI)在2005年合并而成——译者注）他向学生传授设计和角色的秘密，这些学生只比他1979年在横滨一家比萨餐厅想到《吃豆人》创意（根据公司典故）时稍微年轻一点儿。
The character of the circle with the missing slice, he says, was the product of a typical Japanese company structure that insulated people such as him from job insecurity and thus incubated creativity. Be?hind the fa?ade of rigid, rules-based Japan Inc, says Mr Iwatani, were companies that had mastered digital-talent management long before Facebook and Google were around. Knowing that one would never get rich from even the most lucrative idea was part of the trade-off.
他说，吃豆人圆圈缺失一角的特征，是典型的日本公司结构的产物，这种结构使像他这样的人不用面对工作不安全感，从而孵化了创造力。岩谷彻表示，在“日本公司”(Japan Inc)僵硬、基于规则的表象背后，一些日本公司早在Facebook和谷歌(Google)问世之前就掌握了数字人才管理的诀窍。这种交换的另一面是，这些人才要明白：他们即使贡献出最有利可图的创意也发不了财。
He clears a space on a desk cluttered with stuffed toys, a clock featuring the game’s four animated ghosts (Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde) and other Pac-Manmemorabilia to find a model of the original Pac-Mancabinet that once dominated arcades. Collectors can nowadays buy the real thing on eBay for about $2,000. Mr Iwatani’s home is too small to accommodate one, he sighs.
他的桌子上摆满了毛绒玩具、一只带有吃豆人游戏中四个动画幽灵(Blinky、Inky、Pinky和Clyde)图标的座钟以及其他吃豆人纪念品，他在桌面上清理出一块地方，找到了一个曾经风靡游乐场的吃豆人原始街机的模型。如今，收藏家们可以在eBay上花大约2000美元买到一台真机。但他感叹道，自己的家太小，放不下真实尺寸的街机。
“Japanese game companies used to be places of total freedom. We had al?most no orders, except to make fun games,” he says, before qualifying the remark. Although the global success of Pac-Man took Mr Iwatani and his employer by surprise, the game had been design?ed with a laser-sharp commercial purpose: to entice more women into arcades.
“日本游戏公司曾是完全自由的地方。我们几乎无所顾忌——除了制作有趣的游戏，”他说。但他很快作了修正。虽然《吃豆人》的全球成功让岩谷彻和他的老板意外，但这款游戏的设计带有明确的商业目的：吸引更多女性进入游乐场。
To do this he needed to infuse games with personality and emotion. Until Pac-Manbarrelled on to the scene with a distinctive ego defined by a chomping mouth, onscreen avatars had generally been impersonal — a spacecraft, a gun turret, a ball.Pac-Man’s instant sense of life began the DNA spiral that has since given gamers characters such as Mario, Lara Croft and Angry Birds. Having dec?ided on the hero’s basic shape, he deb?ated with his team whether to give it eyes or a nose. “The discussion didn’t take very long. A few minutes. The character was all in the mouth.”
要做到这一点，他需要为游戏注入个性和情感。在以张合的大嘴展现独特自我的吃豆人现身屏幕之前，占据屏幕的主要角色通常都是非人格化的，如一艘宇宙飞船、一座炮塔或者一个球。吃豆人即时传递出的生命感，开启了一条DNA链，此后衍生出了许多游戏人物，如马里奥、劳拉?克劳芙特(Lara Croft)及愤怒的小鸟(Angry Birds)。在确定英雄主角的基本形状后，他与自己的团队辩论了是否给它加上眼睛或鼻子。“讨论没有持续多长时间。只有几分钟。这个人物的性格都表现在一张大嘴上。”
Perhaps more important was the dec?ision to give each ghost its own colour — an issue on which Mr Iwatani fought a tense battle with the president and founder of Namco,Masaya Nakamura.
或许更重要的是，他决定给每个幽灵自己不同的颜色。岩谷彻在这个问题上与南梦宫创始人和社长中村雅哉(Masaya Nakamura)进行了一番激烈争论。
“Mr Nakamura was very scary. All the developers on the team, and all the people our age, knew that each ghost had to have a different colour?.?.?.?the ghosts needed to be cute like cartoons. But Mr Nakamura wanted them all red. I was 26 years old, and it was terrifying to confront the boss,” says Mr Iwatani. “But I decided to hit him with data. I conduc?ted an internal survey among my colleagues and, with my hands shaking, presented Mr Nakamura with the results. It was 40-0 in fav?our of coloured ghosts, and he agreed.”
“中村非常令人敬畏。团队里所有开发人员以及我们这个年龄段的所有人，都知道每个幽灵都必须有一个不同的颜色……这些幽灵需要看起来像卡通一样可爱。但中村希望它们都是红色。我当时26岁，对抗老板是很可怕的事，”岩谷彻说。“但我决定用数据说服他。我在同事中搞了一次内部摸底调查，然后颤抖着双手将结果交给中村。所有40名同事都支持用彩色的幽灵，他也就同意了。”
The risk that Mr Iwatani sees now, amid intensified competition and focus on shareholder return, is that Japanese games companies are far less good at repeating their eureka moments. The dominance of the smartphone, which analysts believe have narrowly overtaken consoles as a medium for selling games, presents a precarious balance of opportunity and risk.
岩谷彻认为，如今这个时代的风险在于，在竞争加剧和关注股东回报的大背景下，日本游戏公司已经不再善于重现灵感迸发的时刻。智能手机的主导地位（分析师们认为，作为销售游戏的媒介，智能手机已经以微弱优势超越游戏机）带来了机会和风险之间的不稳定平衡。
“There is good and bad. The good is that smartphone games have hugely in?c?reased the number of gamers. Less good is that it has drawn in companies that are only really interested in making money. These are companies that do not make games because they love games,” he says.
“这有好处，也有坏处。好处是，智能手机游戏极大地增加了玩家的数量。不太好的是，它吸引来了一些只对赚钱感兴趣的公司。这些公司不是因为爱游戏而制作游戏，”他说。
The effect of this, along with the wider financial pressures, has produced a flood of bankable sequels to the most popular titles.
这种局面产生的影响，加上整体的财务压力，已导致开发企业热衷于推出热门游戏的续集，视其为靠谱的产品。
“When you come up with an idea these days, you have to think about profits. I don’t think that it works for games companies to be listed. It was always easier to make “Pac-Man 2” and “Pac-Man 3” than to come up with a completely new idea because new ideas fail more than they succeed, and shareholders don’t like that,” says Mr Iwatani.
“如今，当你想出一个创意时，你必须考虑利润。我不认为游戏公司上市是件好事。制作《吃豆人2》和《吃豆人3》总比拿出一个全新的创意更容易，因为新的创意失败的几率比成功更大，而股东们不喜欢这样，”岩谷彻说。
Pac-Man goes to Hollywood
《吃豆人》来到了好莱坞
To a game geek, Toru Iwatani’s office is paradise. Artefacts from the 1980s golden era of arcade games are hanging or perched everywhere. In one corner is the motherboard from the first Pac-Man arcade machine.
对于一个游戏迷来说，岩谷彻的办公室简直就是天堂。这里满屋悬挂或堆放着上世纪80年代街机游戏黄金时代的标志性物件。在一个角落，放着第一代《吃豆人》街机的主板。
To some, these historical trinkets may appear objects of a niche passion. Hollywood is betting otherwise.
对一些人来说，这些历史遗留的小玩意儿可能是小众激情的对象。但好莱坞正在另一个方向上进行豪赌。
With a flourish, Mr Iwatani brings out his proudest document: the flyer for Pixels , the forthcoming Hollywood movie seeking to exploit global gaming nostalgia. The poster, he points out excitedly, is dominated by a vast Pac-Man laying waste to a city. Mr Iwatani, he beams, is a key character in the movie: at one point the inventor of Pac-Man, played by Denis Akiyama, offers to talk his yellow creation down from its orgy of destruction. “Hello my sweet little boy. Look how big you’ve grown,” says the fictional Mr Iwatani before his hand is bitten off and he screams for the military to “annihilate this stupid thing!”.
岩谷彻得意地一挥手，拿出了他最引以为傲的文件：即将上映、寻求挖掘全球游戏怀旧热的好莱坞电影《Pixels》的宣传单张。他兴奋地指出，这份海报突出了一个巨大的吃豆人在吞噬一座城市。岩谷彻兴奋地说，他在电影中是一个关键的角色：在一个情节中，由丹尼斯?秋山(Denis Akiyama)饰演的吃豆人发明者自告奋勇，去劝说他创造的小黄人停止一场疯狂的破坏。“你好，我可爱的小男孩。看看你都长得多么大了，”虚构的岩谷彻说完后，他的手就被咬掉了，他尖叫着要军队“消灭这个愚蠢的东西！”。
The human heroes of the film, which is released in July, are retired champions of classic arcade games, such as Pac-Man, Centipede and Donkey Kong. But equally worshipped are the games themselves, featuring characters so devoutly beloved of the generation now in their forties and fifties that once clustered into arcades around the world to stoke the machines with combined billions of pounds, dollars and yen.
在这部将在7月上映的电影中，人类英雄都是经典街机游戏如《吃豆人》、《蜈蚣》(Centipede)和《大金刚》(Donkey Kong)的退休粉丝。但同样受到尊崇的是这些游戏本身，如今四、五十岁的这一代人虔诚地喜爱着这些游戏中的角色，他们曾聚集在世界各地的游乐场，塞给这些机器总计数十亿的英镑、美元和日元。
《吃豆人》与游戏黄金时代
更新于2015年06月26日
来源于原版英语
When the estimated size of the global games market in 2015 comes up in conversation, Toru Iwatani has to write the figure $78bn down on a piece of paper.
当我们谈到2015年全球游戏市场的预估规模时，岩谷彻(Toru Iwatani)不得不把780亿美元这串数字写在一张纸上。
The man who invented Pac-Man, the most successful arcade game in history and among the most widely-recognised digital icons on the planet, stares again at the number, before mentally converting it into yen. It still seems wrong, he says. “Are there too many zeroes?”
这位《吃豆人》(Pac-Man)游戏的创始人又看了一遍这串数字，然后将它心算成日元。他说，看起来还是不对，“后面的零会不会太多了？”《吃豆人》是历史上最成功的街机游戏，也是地球上知名度最高的数字图标之一。
The question, asked in the depths of a tiny, claustrophobic office in Tokyo Polytechnic University, is only half-joking. In the 35 years since the release ofPac-Man, the industry spawn?ed by Mr Iwatani’s yellow glutton has generated fabulous wealth but left many of its greatest Japanese pioneers no better off than any other salarymen.
在东京工艺大学(Tokyo Polytechnic University)一间狭小、幽闭的办公室里提出的这一问题只是半开玩笑。自《吃豆人》问世35年来，岩谷彻的黄色吃豆人衍生出的产业创造出了巨大财富，但不少最伟大的日本先驱者境况并不比一般的打工者好多少。
That is not necessarily a bad thing, he says. The creative environment in which Mr Iwatani was allowed to wallow at game developer Namco back in the 1980s should, he believes, become the model for games design in the era of the smartphone.
岩谷彻说，这未必是一件坏事。他认为，自己上世纪80年代在游戏开发公司南梦宫(Namco)被允许沉迷于的那种创意环境，已成为智能手机时代游戏设计的模式。
“The beauty of Pac-Man is that anyone who plays it immediately knows what is going on in the game. That is why it still works today if you download it on a smartphone. Thirty-five years ago, we were limited by the power of the CPU [processor], now we don’t have those constraints, but game makers need to be thinking about what made the older games so good.”
“《吃豆人》之美在于，任何上手玩的人都能立刻明白这款游戏是怎么回事。这就是为什么如果你今天用智能手机下载它的话，还仍然可以玩。35年前，我们受到CPU（处理器）运算能力的限制，现在我们不再有这些限制，但游戏制作商需要思考一个问题：是什么让这些老款游戏如此有魔力？”
He pulls out a Pac-Man branded iPhone to show his two favourites of the moment — Jewel Mania and Puzzle & Dragons . The latter, produced by Japanese company GungHo, has been downloaded more than 35m times in Japan, the equivalent of a quarter of the population. The smartphone, he says, is doing today what Pac-Mandid all those years ago: the games that are successful thrive on their simplicity, gameplay and their ability to broaden, very suddenly, the universe of games players.
他取出一部贴有《吃豆人》标识的iPhone，展示自己现在最喜欢的两款游戏——《宝石迷域》(Jewel Mania)与《智龙迷城》(Puzzle & Dragons)。日本游戏企业GungHo开发的《智龙迷城》在日本已被下载超过3500万次，相当于该国人口的四分之一。他说，智能手机如今正在扮演《吃豆人》当年的角色：成功的游戏要依靠自身的简洁性、可玩性以及极快扩展游戏玩家群体的能力。
Companies such as Nintendo, which has resisted until recently any idea of making its famous Super Mario and Mario Kart available on mobile phones, must embrace the new frontier, he says. “Watching grannies playing video games on their phones on the train is great. It is what I was trying to do all along with Pac-Man.”
他说，一些公司——如直到不久以前一直拒绝将其著名的《超级马里奥》(Super Mario)和《马里奥赛车》(Mario Kart)搬到手机上的任天堂(Nintendo)——必须拥抱新的领域。“看到阿婆在火车上用手机玩电子游戏令人喜悦。这就是我一直想借助《吃豆人》实现的现实。”
Over the next three decades at Nam?co, and a career in which he produced more than 50 games, he pushed the theme of easy accessibility. Alpine Racer and Time Crisiswere particularly critical in bringing players into the heart of the game by using physical movement in?stead of a complex set of controls.
在岩谷彻为南梦宫工作的30年、制作了超过50款游戏的职业生涯中，他始终力推易操作的主题。《高山滑雪》(Alpine Racer)与《化解危机》(Time Crisis)利用肢体动作（而非一组复杂的控制）把玩家带入游戏核心，在这方面起了尤为关键的作用。
Having retired in 2007 from what was by then Bandai Namco, the father of Japanese video games is now a professor of game development. He tea?ch?es the sec?rets of design and character to students only a little younger than he was when the idea of Pac-Man— according to corporate mythology — hit him in a Yokohama pizza restaurant in 1979.
岩谷彻2007年从当时的万代南梦宫(Bandai Namco)退休，这位日本电子游戏之父现在是一名游戏开发专业的教授。（万代南梦宫是由游戏开发公司南梦宫与玩具制造商万代(BANDAI)在2005年合并而成——译者注）他向学生传授设计和角色的秘密，这些学生只比他1979年在横滨一家比萨餐厅想到《吃豆人》创意（根据公司典故）时稍微年轻一点儿。
The character of the circle with the missing slice, he says, was the product of a typical Japanese company structure that insulated people such as him from job insecurity and thus incubated creativity. Be?hind the fa?ade of rigid, rules-based Japan Inc, says Mr Iwatani, were companies that had mastered digital-talent management long before Facebook and Google were around. Knowing that one would never get rich from even the most lucrative idea was part of the trade-off.
他说，吃豆人圆圈缺失一角的特征，是典型的日本公司结构的产物，这种结构使像他这样的人不用面对工作不安全感，从而孵化了创造力。岩谷彻表示，在“日本公司”(Japan Inc)僵硬、基于规则的表象背后，一些日本公司早在Facebook和谷歌(Google)问世之前就掌握了数字人才管理的诀窍。这种交换的另一面是，这些人才要明白：他们即使贡献出最有利可图的创意也发不了财。
He clears a space on a desk cluttered with stuffed toys, a clock featuring the game’s four animated ghosts (Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde) and other Pac-Manmemorabilia to find a model of the original Pac-Mancabinet that once dominated arcades. Collectors can nowadays buy the real thing on eBay for about $2,000. Mr Iwatani’s home is too small to accommodate one, he sighs.
他的桌子上摆满了毛绒玩具、一只带有吃豆人游戏中四个动画幽灵(Blinky、Inky、Pinky和Clyde)图标的座钟以及其他吃豆人纪念品，他在桌面上清理出一块地方，找到了一个曾经风靡游乐场的吃豆人原始街机的模型。如今，收藏家们可以在eBay上花大约2000美元买到一台真机。但他感叹道，自己的家太小，放不下真实尺寸的街机。
“Japanese game companies used to be places of total freedom. We had al?most no orders, except to make fun games,” he says, before qualifying the remark. Although the global success of Pac-Man took Mr Iwatani and his employer by surprise, the game had been design?ed with a laser-sharp commercial purpose: to entice more women into arcades.
“日本游戏公司曾是完全自由的地方。我们几乎无所顾忌——除了制作有趣的游戏，”他说。但他很快作了修正。虽然《吃豆人》的全球成功让岩谷彻和他的老板意外，但这款游戏的设计带有明确的商业目的：吸引更多女性进入游乐场。
To do this he needed to infuse games with personality and emotion. Until Pac-Manbarrelled on to the scene with a distinctive ego defined by a chomping mouth, onscreen avatars had generally been impersonal — a spacecraft, a gun turret, a ball.Pac-Man’s instant sense of life began the DNA spiral that has since given gamers characters such as Mario, Lara Croft and Angry Birds. Having dec?ided on the hero’s basic shape, he deb?ated with his team whether to give it eyes or a nose. “The discussion didn’t take very long. A few minutes. The character was all in the mouth.”
要做到这一点，他需要为游戏注入个性和情感。在以张合的大嘴展现独特自我的吃豆人现身屏幕之前，占据屏幕的主要角色通常都是非人格化的，如一艘宇宙飞船、一座炮塔或者一个球。吃豆人即时传递出的生命感，开启了一条DNA链，此后衍生出了许多游戏人物，如马里奥、劳拉?克劳芙特(Lara Croft)及愤怒的小鸟(Angry Birds)。在确定英雄主角的基本形状后，他与自己的团队辩论了是否给它加上眼睛或鼻子。“讨论没有持续多长时间。只有几分钟。这个人物的性格都表现在一张大嘴上。”
Perhaps more important was the dec?ision to give each ghost its own colour — an issue on which Mr Iwatani fought a tense battle with the president and founder of Namco,Masaya Nakamura.
或许更重要的是，他决定给每个幽灵自己不同的颜色。岩谷彻在这个问题上与南梦宫创始人和社长中村雅哉(Masaya Nakamura)进行了一番激烈争论。
“Mr Nakamura was very scary. All the developers on the team, and all the people our age, knew that each ghost had to have a different colour?.?.?.?the ghosts needed to be cute like cartoons. But Mr Nakamura wanted them all red. I was 26 years old, and it was terrifying to confront the boss,” says Mr Iwatani. “But I decided to hit him with data. I conduc?ted an internal survey among my colleagues and, with my hands shaking, presented Mr Nakamura with the results. It was 40-0 in fav?our of coloured ghosts, and he agreed.”
“中村非常令人敬畏。团队里所有开发人员以及我们这个年龄段的所有人，都知道每个幽灵都必须有一个不同的颜色……这些幽灵需要看起来像卡通一样可爱。但中村希望它们都是红色。我当时26岁，对抗老板是很可怕的事，”岩谷彻说。“但我决定用数据说服他。我在同事中搞了一次内部摸底调查，然后颤抖着双手将结果交给中村。所有40名同事都支持用彩色的幽灵，他也就同意了。”
The risk that Mr Iwatani sees now, amid intensified competition and focus on shareholder return, is that Japanese games companies are far less good at repeating their eureka moments. The dominance of the smartphone, which analysts believe have narrowly overtaken consoles as a medium for selling games, presents a precarious balance of opportunity and risk.
岩谷彻认为，如今这个时代的风险在于，在竞争加剧和关注股东回报的大背景下，日本游戏公司已经不再善于重现灵感迸发的时刻。智能手机的主导地位（分析师们认为，作为销售游戏的媒介，智能手机已经以微弱优势超越游戏机）带来了机会和风险之间的不稳定平衡。
“There is good and bad. The good is that smartphone games have hugely in?c?reased the number of gamers. Less good is that it has drawn in companies that are only really interested in making money. These are companies that do not make games because they love games,” he says.
“这有好处，也有坏处。好处是，智能手机游戏极大地增加了玩家的数量。不太好的是，它吸引来了一些只对赚钱感兴趣的公司。这些公司不是因为爱游戏而制作游戏，”他说。
The effect of this, along with the wider financial pressures, has produced a flood of bankable sequels to the most popular titles.
这种局面产生的影响，加上整体的财务压力，已导致开发企业热衷于推出热门游戏的续集，视其为靠谱的产品。
“When you come up with an idea these days, you have to think about profits. I don’t think that it works for games companies to be listed. It was always easier to make “Pac-Man 2” and “Pac-Man 3” than to come up with a completely new idea because new ideas fail more than they succeed, and shareholders don’t like that,” says Mr Iwatani.
“如今，当你想出一个创意时，你必须考虑利润。我不认为游戏公司上市是件好事。制作《吃豆人2》和《吃豆人3》总比拿出一个全新的创意更容易，因为新的创意失败的几率比成功更大，而股东们不喜欢这样，”岩谷彻说。
Pac-Man goes to Hollywood
《吃豆人》来到了好莱坞
To a game geek, Toru Iwatani’s office is paradise. Artefacts from the 1980s golden era of arcade games are hanging or perched everywhere. In one corner is the motherboard from the first Pac-Man arcade machine.
对于一个游戏迷来说，岩谷彻的办公室简直就是天堂。这里满屋悬挂或堆放着上世纪80年代街机游戏黄金时代的标志性物件。在一个角落，放着第一代《吃豆人》街机的主板。
To some, these historical trinkets may appear objects of a niche passion. Hollywood is betting otherwise.
对一些人来说，这些历史遗留的小玩意儿可能是小众激情的对象。但好莱坞正在另一个方向上进行豪赌。
With a flourish, Mr Iwatani brings out his proudest document: the flyer for Pixels , the forthcoming Hollywood movie seeking to exploit global gaming nostalgia. The poster, he points out excitedly, is dominated by a vast Pac-Man laying waste to a city. Mr Iwatani, he beams, is a key character in the movie: at one point the inventor of Pac-Man, played by Denis Akiyama, offers to talk his yellow creation down from its orgy of destruction. “Hello my sweet little boy. Look how big you’ve grown,” says the fictional Mr Iwatani before his hand is bitten off and he screams for the military to “annihilate this stupid thing!”.
岩谷彻得意地一挥手，拿出了他最引以为傲的文件：即将上映、寻求挖掘全球游戏怀旧热的好莱坞电影《Pixels》的宣传单张。他兴奋地指出，这份海报突出了一个巨大的吃豆人在吞噬一座城市。岩谷彻兴奋地说，他在电影中是一个关键的角色：在一个情节中，由丹尼斯?秋山(Denis Akiyama)饰演的吃豆人发明者自告奋勇，去劝说他创造的小黄人停止一场疯狂的破坏。“你好，我可爱的小男孩。看看你都长得多么大了，”虚构的岩谷彻说完后，他的手就被咬掉了，他尖叫着要军队“消灭这个愚蠢的东西！”。
The human heroes of the film, which is released in July, are retired champions of classic arcade games, such as Pac-Man, Centipede and Donkey Kong. But equally worshipped are the games themselves, featuring characters so devoutly beloved of the generation now in their forties and fifties that once clustered into arcades around the world to stoke the machines with combined billions of pounds, dollars and yen.
在这部将在7月上映的电影中，人类英雄都是经典街机游戏如《吃豆人》、《蜈蚣》(Centipede)和《大金刚》(Donkey Kong)的退休粉丝。但同样受到尊崇的是这些游戏本身，如今四、五十岁的这一代人虔诚地喜爱着这些游戏中的角色，他们曾聚集在世界各地的游乐场，塞给这些机器总计数十亿的英镑、美元和日元。
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