Greening the Games Industry

GTG Links 55 – Look ma, I'm in the Post!

Welcome back. We're in the Washington Post today talking about how, while extremely good, energy efficiency in gaming does not get us to 100% net zero emissions on its own. Maybe that's obvious? Maybe it's not! We also need more more more renewable energy

How does the typical game developer get to work?

If you follow my work with the Sustainable Games Alliance on LinkedIn (or on our discord – which you should join), you’ll have already seen that we recently announced the completion of a new component of the SGA Scope standard. As a quick refresher, the SGA standard is a set

GTG 54 – UK exits coal, Swedes get a new carbon calc tool, solar panels in unexpected places, and gaming w/ clean power

Grab your favourite beverage, pull up a chair, and get comfy because we've got almost a whole month's worth of links for you today. Things found amongst the rubble in Lebanon CleanPlay wants to sign gamers up for renewable electricity plans Rich Hillerman and David Helgasson

Climate is economics is political economy is climate

I’m back, at last. I had a thing planned to write here over the last few weeks, but the main findings were “non-conclusive”, so I haven’t written them up. Instead, I wanted to express some slightly vague ideas and gesture at some big challenges that are constantly on

GTG Links 53 – Microsoft's Three Mile Island, EA & T2 Impact reports, and the GHG footprints of the 1%

It's a long weekend here, so I'm spending it playing Dragons Dogma 2 (picked up in the sale), but perhaps you might be interested in some reading? Here's a few of the choice pieces that I read the past fortnight that might strike your

Markets vs mayhem
...or How we choose to govern the climate crisis really, really matters: on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)

I think it’s safe to say that the Western world is experiencing a crisis of public governance. Electoral democracy is no longer representing the ‘demos’, captured instead by lobbyists, a widespread disillusionment at the lack of responsiveness of major parties with their traditional social bases hollowed out, and a

GTG Links 52 – Console upgrades, Europe's positive power story, more AI deets, and Super Typhoon Yagi

I am on deadline for a grant app submission this weekend, so this one will be super-mega-rapid fire. I also haven't finished the piece I meant to for last week, so things are starting to pile up. Nevertheless, we press on. Let's check out the trends

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GTG Links 51 – Sustainability awards, rain over the Sahara, climate policy and more extreme weather

Though most of the games industry has been focused on Gamescom the past fortnight, with little other news besides, and no new ESG disclosures to share (still waiting on a few of the big ones) this week's links might seem a bit light on. But the rest of

The Big Scary Number

Last year I spent a couple of months’ worth of newsletter entries trying to figure out the greenhouse gas emissions associated with different parts of the games industry, trying out different assumptions and methods. I never managed to arrive at a single “big scary number” that reflected the true global

GTG Links 50 – Fleshing out the picture of 2023 game emissions + releasing on old hardware + extreme weather and insurance losses + Geoff Mann on climate politics

This week's post is heavily weighted towards new annual disclosures from games companies, and my annual spreadsheet collecting their numbers is filling up (I'm at about 20 out of an expected 30-ish disclosures now) so we are probably about 2/3rds of the way towards a

The Summer of Sustainability, and my new Scope 3 briefing paper

For the past 6 weeks, we at the Sustainable Games Alliance have been running fortnightly seminars and workshops on the sustainability challenges and opportunities facing the games industry in Europe and the rest of the world. In this newsletter, I want to give you a little précis of each one,

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GTG Links 49 – Bumper ESG data from Nintendo, Ubisoft, Embracer, Apple, SEGA, Squenix ++ AI impact news ++++ so much summer heat

This one's a MAMMOTH post – seriously it's like twice as long as the usual links posts, so let's get straight to it. Nintendo's 2023 ESG data Nintendo’s 2023 emissions data has been posted to their website – it’s a bit of

What does climate risk look like for the games industry?

The SGA Webinar we held the other week was great fun – we had a good crowd and some great questions at the end, and as promised the recording is now online. If you missed it, or you just want to hear me talk about my understanding of the main features

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GTG Links 48 – AI impacts, Google and Amazon ESG target misses, Eco Modes + Electric Planes (!)

Been a while, so we have accumulated a ton of exciting, disappointing, and all-around interesting news to share. Our SGA webinar on the impact of EU sustainability legislation yesterday was great, and I'll share the video and slides here when its up for those who couldn't

A Sustainable Games Alliance update + invitation to our event next week on what EU sustainability regulation means for the games industry

Hello! It’s been way too long. It’s been a busy, sick, and near-freezing winter here which is quite rare for these parts. The body (and mind) wants to hibernate – nevertheless, we persist. I have not been idle though, far from it. Despite the gaps in our regular schedule

GTG Links 48 – ESGalore! Unity, Tencent, 37 interactive, +PS5 boxes lose 8K logo ++Climate impacts on food prices

This week's links are short and sweet but packed with goodness. Lets dive in. Unity’s ESG report is out – in a new web-based format, allowing for some neat interactive charts (see that "Cloud" footprint doubling from 22-23! phwoarr) and overall a 6.5% increase in

How much water does a typical game studio use?

According to UN Water, Monday 17th June is “World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.” I started working on this piece without knowing about that bit of serendipity, but it came up because I’ve been thinking about resource use including water use, as it comes up in some work

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GTG Links 46 – Sony's eco-charging controllers, AI power demand 🆙, climate and policy news, and 🧱LEGO making sustainability a KPI for all

It's been too long between posts, we've accrued a link debt a mile long. Lot's of posts to share – starting with a few new details on Sony's PlayStation user numbers & controller charger scheduling, tons of scary climate news hitting before Northern

What’s the climate like in the near-future of Watchdogs Legion?

I’ve been playing the 2020 game Watchdogs Legion this past fortnight, which has been on my list since it came out. It’s set in London in the late 2020s or early 2030s – right around the time frame when the sustainability transition needs to be fully underway if we

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GTG Links 45 – Nordic Game Conference, Microsoft's Sustainability Miss, Game Hardware News + Euro public showing no sign of a green backlash

Phew! It's been a crazy week here at GTG HQ so let's dive in. Tons of games + tech + sustainability news delivered straight to your inbox. Are you going to Nordic Game Conference next week? The SGA will be there! Check out the SGA talk by my

Who still needs to know climate change is happening?

One of the main paradigms I still see many people framing climate action through is the lens of “awareness”. On one level, this is perfectly fine. Keeping attention focused on the issue so it remains at the front of people’s minds is clearly valuable. But I often see ‘awareness’

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GTG Links 44 – Slow gaming, digital distro numbers, insurance indicators + improved corn yields from shutting down coal

It's Friday, which means it's time for more cool games + climate news and stories, great new research on living well within planetary boundaries, and the heaps more. Sea Shepherd founder briefly becomes the final boss in Dave the Diver English version | The Final BossThe Final Boss

Gaming and extinction: notes on emissions, degrowth & the hardware upgrade cycle

On Friday I gave a keynote as part of the day-long online symposium “Imagining Extinction in Video Games: An International Symposium” organised by researchers at the Universidade Do Porto. It was lovely to be invited, and I found our discussion afterwards lively and engaging, with fantastic responses to my talk

GTG Links 43 – Sega & Rovio ESG analysis, climate chaos & costs + internet cable repair guys

ESG season rolls on, with the trickle of new reporting coming down the pipe. But first, check out this cool new (academic) piece by Friend of the Newsletter Larry May and co-author Ben Hall: Thinking ecologically with Battlefield 2042 We analyse a dataset of player-generated paratexts that were systematically gathered

Big-picture trends from 2023 in games, and unsustainable emissions trajectories

Every year Newzoo puts out a report on the major trends happening in the global games market. If there was one central finding of this year’s report, which covers what happened to games in 2023 (which I first saw summarised in Simon Carless’ newsletter), it’s that the games