Climate Change X Gaming Industry | Barcin Kocabas

There is a boom in the video game industry. Globally, there were 2.69 billion gamers by 2020. There’s no doubt that gaming has a variety of personal benefits, including improving manual dexterity, improving social skills, and even reducing stress. However, a growing number of studies indicate that video gaming’s environmental impacts are projected to rise, from the mining of materials for gaming consoles to the energy intensity of cloud gaming. The gaming sector and individuals can improve sustainability, in order to explain how, we should explore its environmental impacts. 

A large carbon footprint is left behind by video games themselves, as well as how they are manufactured, shipped, and sold. Even digital games can contribute to climate change. The majority of games are played online, which requires a lot of data usage, contributing to “internet pollution,” which is responsible for almost 3.7% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

There are some movements toward finding solutions to environmental problems, especially carbon footprint, in the game industry as well. The organization, Playing for the planet, aims to inspire young people to learn and act in support of the environment. The Playing for the Planet Alliance was launched in September 2019 at UN Headquarters in New York during the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit. The initiative is being facilitated by UNEP with the support of GRID-Arendal and Playmob. To become a member of the Alliance, companies must make a range of commitments, such as integrating green activations into games and reducing their emissions. ( Playing4theplanet 2022) According to the 2021 Annual Report, Playing for the Planet aims to rally the industry to reduce its carbon footprint and to provide it with the tools to measure, reduce, and set targets to decarbonise. Secondly, to expand the Alliance continuously to create a positive impact on the industry and environment and to share the learning of the initiative with others within the industry.

At present, the organization has 32 gaming companies and 7 associate members. The members include big companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Ubisoft, as well as small and medium-sized game studios. With further work on targets, definitions, and increased ambition set for 2022, 60% of Alliance members have committed to becoming carbon negative or net-zero by 2030. 

One of the other big projects Playing for the Planet participates in is the Green Games Guide partnered with Ukie and Games London. The Green Games Guide is the first resource that contains practical advice and outlines steps that game businesses can take to reduce emissions and waste across their offices and operations.(Ukie 2022)

The guide has the Life cycle assessment of the gaming industry to explain the impacts of the industry from the beginning to the end and explain the companies where can they start to change to reduce the emissions.

Basically, the guide instructs brands on how to define their scope and timeline, as well as calculate their carbon footprint. The next step is to implement an ambitious action plan to reduce their carbon footprint at this point. In order to do that the guides offer to control & reduce office energy use, Switch to a sustainable energy supplier and ​​review data storage policies in detail. In the case studies, they collaborated with companies such as Sony and Space Ape to explain how to apply the guidance in the real world. According to their case study, Space Ape is one of the games sector’s leaders in addressing the impact it has on the environment. The studio now offsets 200% of its carbon footprint, reduced its studio footprint by 25% in 2019 and committed to reducing it by a further 10% in 2020. ( Green Games Guide, 2021)

It can be concluded that the gaming industry has made considerable progress in terms of green actions over the last two years. With the support of the UN Environment Programme, it becomes increasingly important to reduce the environmental impact of the entire industry, as well as raise awareness among the end-users. While we cannot say the current actions are enough, we can affirm that incremental improvements are being made every year.