Godzilla squashes more than buildings – SCN Encourager 5/28/2014
The dang thing also stomps on long-held notions.
I’m not a big admirer of Tinsel Town, but I grew up thinking of Hollywood as a premier economic driver in our country – the madcap intersection where exciting adventures, creative special effects, and the “beautiful people” all intentionally collided to bring us our much desired escape-from-reality big screen entertainment.
Of course, I thought the very same thing about my home town Flint when I was a wee lad.
Shows what I know about premier economic drivers.
But even while the glitz wore off my memories about Flint, I always thought of Hollywood as the place where the biggest of careers and the biggest of fortunes were made.
Whoa, was I wrong.
I just found out that despite Godzilla’s stupendous opening weekend box office take of $93 million (record-breaking for a creature feature) AND despite an opening weekend box office total for the new ‘X-Men’ movie that surpassed that by far – these gross sales figures are actually chump change when compared to another industry.
And it’s an industry that we know pretty well.
Our students are totally immersed in it.
This industry is “video gaming.”
Even though I wrote just last week about how video gaming draws more raving fans than many of our major events in the world of sports, I’m still somewhat in denial about this. (along with a few other of my idiosyncrasies…)
But the numbers don’t lie.
Consider this.
Right now, the all-time box office record for a movie during its three-day opening weekend is Marvel’s The Avengers, which stands $208 million.
The two Hunger Games movies came in at about $154-158 million each, earning them both spots in the top 10.
So, while I was doing who knows what last November, I never knew that the latest version of the video game Call of Duty was released.
And on it’s first day of sales to the public, it topped the billion dollar mark!
What the…?!?
Amazingly, this doesn’t even place Call of Duty at the top of the best first day sales list.
This prominent position is held by the earlier release of the new Grand Theft Auto game, which garnered well over a billon dollars in sales in less than 24 hours.
What the…?!?
The whole concept of today’s video designers and gamers morphing into the new “Titans of Capitalism” is mind-boggling to me.
But at least this ol’ dad is learning and putting this knowledge into action.
Instead of continuing to ask “the men” in my daughters’ lives about what’s happening in their jobs and careers, I now pry from a more 21st century angle.
“Hey guys! Whatcha been playing?”
Tom Page, SCN
