2023届高考英语二轮复习外刊阅读训练18

23年高考英语外刊阅读训练——阅读理解：2022年美国高管薪酬逆市上涨 【原标题】 As video games grow, they are eating the media 【原文】 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. 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. 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. 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. All this holds lessons for other industries—chiefly that, if you are in media, you need to be in g