宝可梦COO在接受《卫报》采访时表示：目标是让IP存在数百年

如果说宝可梦是世界顶级IP，应该没有人会反对吧？而就在最近，宝可梦公司的首席运营官（COO）宇都宫崇人在接受《卫报》采访时表示：我们的目标是让宝可梦系列能长存数百年时间，至少确保有生之年内，宝可梦系列依然存活

任何观看过《宠物小精灵Presents》直播的人都会立即认出宇都宫孝人。作为一位以其花哨的宠物小精灵衬衫而闻名的COO，这位打扮得一丝不苟的首席运营官已经向世界介绍了几代新的宠物小精灵。“我的工作？我整天整天都在想宠物小精灵，”他笑着说。“我们的目标是让宠物小精灵活下去数百年，确保它能在我们寿命之后依然存在。”

Anyone who’s watched a Pokémon Presents live stream will immediately recognise Utsunomiya. Earning a reputation for his flamboyant Pokémon shirts, the impeccably groomed COO has introduced the world to several new generations of Pokémon. “My job? I spend all day every day thinking about Pokémon,” he says with a smile. “Our goal is to keep Pokémon alive for hundreds of years – making sure it survives well past our lifetimes.”

在今年的宠物小精灵世界锦标赛——这是第18届此类活动——整个横滨港城被皮卡丘的游行和艺术装置所占据，有2,000名选手和10,000名粉丝在一个格外潮湿的八月进行了朝圣，无论是儿童还是成年人。“我认为过去我们有两个不同的观众群体——年轻孩子和成年人——但现在我们开始看到一个家庭观众，他们一起享受这些体验，”宇都宫孝人说。

During this year’s Pokémon world championships – the 18th such event – the entire port city of Yokohama was overtaken by Pikachu parades and art installations, as 2,000 competitors and 10,000 fans made the pilgrimage during a particularly humid August, children and adults alike. “I think in the past, we had two separate audiences – younger kids and adults – but now we’re starting to see a family audience where they’re enjoying the experiences together,” says Utsunomiya.

“很容易只关注成年人：他们有很多可支配的收入，你可以在社交媒体上实时看到他们的反应……但我们必须确保我们仍然能够吸引年轻孩子，”他继续说，“孩子们非常诚实——他们不会玩他们不喜欢的东西。如果你的品牌感觉陈旧或无聊，他们会立即摒弃它。”

“It’s easy to just focus on adults: they have a lot of disposable income, you can see their reactions in real time on social media … But we need to make sure that we are still keeping the younger kids interested,” he continues, “Kids are very honest – they won’t play something they don’t like. If your brand feels old or boring, they will immediately dismiss it.”

尽管田尾立等人创作的原始角色，从喷火龙到吉利蛋，耿鬼到暴鲤龙，仍然是最经久不衰的可识别的，但如今有超过1,000只小怪物供当代的孩子们捕捉。虽然一些最近的设计已经偏离了旧有的昆虫和可信动物——看看受到剑、枝形吊灯甚至冰淇淋启发的宠物小精灵——Game Freak的设计仍然是宠物小精灵最大的资产。开发者是否仍然能够设计出和最初的151只一样具有标志性的怪物呢？

Though Tajiri and co’s original characters, from Charizard to Chansey, Gengar to Gyarados, are still the most enduringly recognisable, there are now more than 1,000 little monsters for today’s kids to catch. While some recent designs have moved away from the insects and believable animals of old – see Pokémon inspired by swords, chandeliers and even ice-cream – Game Freak’s designs are still Pokémon’s biggest asset. Can the developer still design monsters as iconic as the original 151?

“我确实认为我们可以继续创造大量新的宠物小精灵，而且如果我们想要继续将宠物小精灵传递给下一代，我们必须创造更有吸引力的宠物小精灵，”宇都宫孝人断言道。“想出新的宠物小精灵的创意是Game Freak真正擅长的领域。那些在孩提时代玩宠物小精灵的人现在进入了Game Freak，并在那些团队中，创造新的宠物小精灵，提出新的想法。”

“I do think we can continue to create lots and lots of new Pokémon, and really we must create more appealing Pokémon if we want to continue passing on Pokémon to the next generations,” Utsunomiya asserts. “Coming up with new Pokémon ideas is an area that Game Freak really excels in. People who grew up playing Pokémon as kids are now entering Game Freak and are on those teams, creating new Pokémon and coming up with new ideas.”

田尾立最初构想宠物小精灵是作为一款视频游戏——Game Boy的链接线启发了定义该特许经营品牌虚构世界的交易和对战——但在2023年，游戏只是更广泛的宠物小精灵谜题的一部分，还有长寿的动画系列、电影、交换卡和商品，以及《宠物小精灵Go》等分支。在这一切的背后，视频游戏对业务有多重要呢？

Tajiri first dreamed up Pokémon as a video game – the Game Boy’s link cable inspired the trading and battling that defines the franchise’s fiction – but in 2023, games are just one piece of the wider Poké puzzle, alongside the long-running anime series, movies, trading cards and merchandise, and spin-offs such as Pokémon Go. With all that going on, how essential are the video games now to the business?

“视频游戏真正是品牌的核心——这将继续保持，”宇都宫孝人回答说，“游戏确实是体验每个宠物小精灵设定的最佳方式。我们真的努力将它们视为活生生的生物；你在游戏中看到它们以及它们在那里的行为……在最初的游戏中，图鉴中的描述和游戏中实际看到的情况之间存在相当大的差距。但从《传说：阿尔宙斯》和《朱红/紫罗兰》开始，你可以在游戏中看到Bidoof等宠物小精灵在那里建巢，还有宠物小精灵成群结队地行进。因此，它们的设定现在更加真实。当涉及到传递在原始图鉴中看到的描述时……我们在那方面还可以做很多。”

“Video games are truly at the core of the brand – and that will continue,” replies Utsunomiya, “the games are really the best way to experience the settings of each Pokémon. We really try to treat them like living creatures; you see them in the game and how they’re behaving there … In the original games, there’s quite a gap between the descriptions in the Pokédex and what you actually saw in the game. But starting with Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet, you see [Pokémon like] Bidoof creating dens in the game, and you have Pokémon travelling in packs. So there’s a newfound realism of their setting. When it comes to delivering the descriptions seen in the original Pokédex … there’s a lot more we can do there.”

近年来，宠物小精灵并非一帆风顺。2022年的游戏《朱红》和《紫罗兰》在视觉上令人失望，并且受到了技术性故障的困扰（而不是可爱的收藏品式故障），它们糟糕的技术性能引发了前所未有的负面反应。

It has not all been rosy for Pokémon in recent years. 2022’s games, Scarlet and Violet, were visually underwhelming and plagued with bugs (of the technical kind, rather than the cutesy collectible kind), their poor technical performance inciting backlash the franchise had never seen before.

“无论我们是否公开回应，我们都始终密切关注社区中正在发生的反馈和对话，”宇都宫孝人表示。“在某些方面，我们并不总能百分之百地与社区的某些要求保持一致，也不能始终提供他们想要的。但我们这样做是希望让宠物小精灵延续很长时间，我相信粉丝和玩家在这方面与我们是一致的。”

“Regardless of whether we publicly respond, we’re always paying very close attention to the feedback and conversations happening in the communities,” Utsunomiya says. “There are certain aspects where we can’t always be 100% aligned with what parts of the community are asking for and what we want to provide. But we do this with the desire to keep Pokémon going for a very long time, and I believe that the fans and players are aligned with us in that respect.”

除了游戏之外，宠物小精灵最近的发布越来越多地渗透到现实生活中，推出了引人注目的睡眠跟踪应用《宠物小精灵Sleep》，以及一个名为《宠物小精灵Smile》的口腔卫生伴侣应用。它似乎越来越像是宠物小精灵被定位为不仅仅是对战怪物，更像是融入我们日常生活的吉祥物。

Outside the games, Pokémon’s recent releases have been spilling over more and more into real life with the eyebrow-raising sleep-tracking app, Pokémon Sleep, and a dental hygiene companion app called Pokémon Smile. It increasingly feels as if Pokémon are positioned less as battling monsters and more as mascots that slot into our day to day lives.

“每个人都必须睡觉。如果我们可以在你无论如何都要做的日常生活方面添加一些娱乐元素，那就有机会，”当我向他提出这个问题时，宇都宫孝人笑道。“宠物小精灵在美洲、欧洲和日本最受欢迎——如果将这些地区的人口相加，大约有十亿人。因此，在这些领土之外仍然有超过七十亿左右的人口。我们真的希望世界其他地方的人也成为充满激情的宠物小精灵粉丝。因此，我们需要学会融入世界各地的价值观和文化。”

“Everyone has to sleep. If we can add a bit of entertainment to an aspect of daily life you have to do anyway, there’s an opportunity there,” laughs Utsunomiya, when I put this to him. “Pokémon is at its most popular in the Americas, Europe and Japan – and if you combine all those populations, it’s around a billion people. So, there are still more than seven billion or so people outside those territories. We really want to have the rest of the world become passionate Pokémon fans. So we need to learn to incorporate those values and cultures around the world.”

对于那些不了解宠物小精灵现象的人，或者自新千年以来已经脱离这一现象的人，这些可收藏的小生物如今比以往任何时候都更受欢迎。原始的Game Boy游戏仍然是该系列最畅销的，销售超过4600万台，但2019年的《宠物小精灵剑/盾》在任天堂Switch上已经销售了2600万台，而整个游戏系列总共销售了超过4.6亿份。《宠物小精灵Go》仍然有大约8千万活跃玩家。日本最成功的娱乐出口品中显然有一种持久的吸引力。在田尾立开始追逐捕捉虫子的“抓住它们全部”的任务中，宠物小精灵公司现在正致力于征服全世界。

It may surprise those outside the Pokémon phenomenon – or those who have fallen off the wagon since the turn of the millennium – that these collectible critters are more popular than ever. The original Game Boy games remain the series’ bestselling, at over 46m units, but 2019’s Pokémon Sword and Shield on the Nintendo Switch have already shifted 26m, and the games as a whole have sold over 460m in total. Pokémon Go still has an estimated 80m active players. There is clearly something enduringly appealing about Japan’s most successful entertainment export. Where Tajiri started out on a catch-em-all quest to capture bugs, the Pokémon Company is now on a quest to capture the world.

“宠物小精灵具有一种只是普遍存在的特质，”宇都宫孝人认为。“当第一款游戏在日本发布时，通常认为视频游戏只是为男孩准备的，但我们很快意识到更多不同背景的观众也在玩这些游戏。我们很快发现这些游戏在世界其他地方也非常吸引人……如果通过宠物小精灵，人们可以相互连接——无论他们身在何处，是谁，这将使我们非常高兴。”

“That there is something that is just universal about Pokémon,” reckons Utsunomiya. “When the first games came out in Japan, it was typical to look at video games as something that are just for boys, but we [soon] realised a much more diverse audience were playing them. We soon found that the games were very appealing to the rest of the world as well … It would make us very happy if, through Pokémon, people can connect with each other – regardless of where they are, or who they are.”

原文链接：‘Our goal is to keep Pokémon alive for hundreds of years’: Pokémon’s chief’s plans for Pikachu and pals

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