经济学人211:日本的手机游戏业 (在线收听

   Business

  商业报道
  Mobile gaming in Japan
  日本的手机游戏业
  Gacha? Gotcha!
  嘎查?弹无虚发!
  Bureaucrats clamp down on a tech billionaire
  手机游戏技术巨头遭到政府打压
  NOT again.
  不要再重复了。
  Just when another tousle-haired Japanese entrepreneur hoped it was safe to make a billion or two,
  当另一个头发散乱的日本企业家希望能安全地创造出十亿,二十亿的价值,
  along come the forces of law and order threatening to throw the rule book at him:
  伴随而来的是法律与秩序的势力,威胁着要把规则手册扔给他:
  in this case, the Act Against Unjustified Premiums and Misleading Representations.
  在这件事上,他违反了不合理的额外费用和误导人的陈述。
  That, at least, is how some people viewed news this week that the Consumer Affairs Agency was investigating a feature,
  至少,一些人把这件事视为了这周的新闻,日本消费者厅正在调查一类以称为完整的嘎查为特色的游戏至少,一
  popular on Japan’s ubiquitous mobile-phone games, called a complete gacha, in which players collect sets of randomly generated tokens to swap for in-game rewards.
  即一类玩家收集随机产生的一套套游戏币,去交换虚拟世界里面的奖品,在日本的手机游戏中普遍存在的游戏。
  Such games have made fortunes for several internet start-ups.
  这样的游戏使几个新兴的网络公司积累了大量财富。
  Agency officials, however, have expressed worries that complete gacha may be a form of gambling,which can cause children and adults to splurge beyond their means.
  然而,机构官员,都对此表示担忧,因为完整的嘎查,可能是一种赌博的形式,这会导致儿童和成年人变挥霍,最终无力支付高昂的游戏费用。
  They questioned its legality.
  他们质疑这游戏模式的合法性。
  The retribution was swift.
  市场对此的回应迅速。
  In three days the value of GREE, whose 35-year-old owner, Yoshikazu Tanaka, has been called the youngest self-made billionaire after Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, plunged by a third.
  在三天内社交网站Gree的市值骤减了三分之一,公司创始人35岁的田中良和,曾被称为除了脸谱的马克扎克伯格之外,最年轻的白手起家的亿万富翁。
  DeNA, another social-games site, lost 22%.
  DeNA,另一家社交游戏网站,损失也达到了22%。
  To Yoshito Hori, a venture capitalist and former GREE backer, the news recalled a pattern of crackdowns on alleged abuses by start-ups in recent years that have discouraged the Japanese from setting up new businesses.
  崛义人,一名风险投资家和前GREE的投资者,这条新闻让他回想起最近几年政府打压新晋企业的种种措施,已经使日本人丧失了开创新商业的勇气。
  He urged the government to seek a harmonious solution that protected both consumers and entrepreneurs:
  他敦促政府寻找一个协调的解决方案,保护消费者以及企业家。
  Killing GREE or DeNA is like killing Sony or Matsushita when they were coming up after the war, he said.
  他说,毁掉GREE或者DeNA,就像毁掉二战后崛起的索尼和松下电器那样严重。
  On May 9th GREE and DeNA gave ground.
  5月9号,GREE和DeNA都作出了让步。
  GREE said it would stop the release of all new complete gacha games and phase out existing ones.
  GREE说他们将会停止发布全部新版完整的gacha游戏,并且逐步取消目前还存在的嘎查游戏。
  DeNA said it would also stop the practice.
  DeNA也说,他们将停止这类游戏上市。
  Mr Hori said he expected they might be prepared to pay back anyone who had overspent.
  崛义人说,他希望两间公司能准备资金还给那些曾经超支了的人。
  It was not clear, though, whether the authorities would let the matter rest there.
  可是,当权者是否将听任这事情自由发展下去,目前还不清楚。
  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/jjxrfyb/business/246293.html