Ben Abraham

Paid-members only

🔗 GTG Links 30 – In case of natural disaster: leave the photos, take the PS5

It's been a year for climate-related disasters – from the Canadian wildfires to the horrendous floods in Libya. In the US alone: "So far, the total cost of disasters in 2023 is more than $57.6bn, according to Noaa. The record figure does not include major disasters such Tropical Storm Hilary

Xbox Gamepass players energy consumption & emissions💨🍃Can we put a number on the game industry’s annual GHG impact? Part 3

Alright, it's time to get back to the main game – putting a figure on the total GHG footprint of the games industry. This time we’re interested in those pesky downstream emissions that happen whenever people actually play our games. For that, we need a couple of pieces of information:

Paid-members only

🔗GTG Links 29: Power, Plants, and Play

A lot more games companies have completed their annual sustainability reporting, and the data is currently being disgested into the convoluted bowels of the increasingly powerful net zero snapshot spreadsheet. We're getting reeeeeal close to being able to give a seriously comprehensive update on the games industry's emissions progress over

The best of corporate ESG Art in 2023

Hey before I jump into this week's post – I just wanted to let you know I have a new piece of writing out in the Cordite Poetry Review. It's a bit outside the typical outlets I write for, but it's called "How to be a digital artist in a time

Paid-members only

🔗 GTG Links 28 – T2 emissions, Twitch & sustainability influence investors, & more sustainability laws

At Gamescom this week Microsoft Xbox won the new Playing for the Planet Green Studio of the Year award. The official Xbox news post about it had this quote: Playing for the Planet credited this win to the efforts of Xbox to drive action beyond the borders of our own

Featured

What if games came with a CO2 emissions label?

Earlier this year, I set out to answer that question – posed initially by Marina Psaros who was (at the time) working for Unity in SF as their sustainability team lead. Would there be a benefit to putting some sort of sticker or label on game boxes and store pages? Could

Paid-members only

🔗 GTG Links 27 – Degradeable games, ESG due dilligence & surprising storage media power findings

Greetings GTG readers, I hope you're doing well and staying away from climate disasters – fires, floods, heatwaves, we are seeing it all. It's been an extremely busy week both personally and professionally, but I've still managed to round up pieces on games designed for 'degradeability', another climate card game, ESG

What does designing for energy efficient games look like?

Back in March, right after GDC, I wrote a piece about the Microsoft Xbox sustainability team’s work to put live power draw numbers front and centre on Xbox devkits, and integrate real world telemetry from actual Xboxes out in the wild. At the time, I was really excited for

GTG Links 26 – Sustainability reports galore

A nice quick one this week. The dichotomy of ESG setting science-based targets // achieving science-based targets pic.twitter.com/73CRpt9o8v — Richard Waite (@waiterich) July 22, 2023 Amazon’s latest sustainability report has some gems in it 9 takeaways from Amazon’s 2022 Sustainability ReportThe annual report describes how we’re

🌿 Green New Deal Simulator brings the 🔋✨vibes✨♻️ we need 🐸

Green New Deal Simulator is a free new game by Molleindustria – the art/games project by designer Paolo Pedercini (who also made Phone Story, Every Day the Same Dream, among other classics). It’s a lite deck-builder, in which the player takes on the role of a powerful government agency,

GTG Links #25 – The One With Every ESG Report (almost)

As promised, the end of the financial year has brought with it a flood of new ESG reporting. Here's the most interesting bits so far, plus a bunch more developments around corporate target setting, climate anxiety research, talks on gamers and sustainability, ESG ratings divergence, and the CO2 locked in

Can we put a number on the game industry’s annual GHG impact? Part 2 – Disc & Digital Distribution

In the previous post in this series, I outlined a very rough guesstimate of the game industry’s annual CO2 emissions from making games, including all related up-stream value chain activities. Before we get to the real meat and potatoes of downstream use of sold products (i.e. playing games)

GTG links #24: The One About Supply Chains & Carbon Credits | June 30

Every links post I think to myself "this will be the last one overloaded with news" and every time I'm wrong. There's too much going on, everyone needs to slow down and take a break. Until then, we perservere. Potential super El Niño building I am not looking forward to

An update on Scope 3 upstream development emissions & the results of the GTG reader survey

This week I wanted to get out the second part of my series on the footprint of the games industry, looking at game distribution emissions. Alas, I didn’t finish it in time so instead, here’s a short update on the figures from last time – plus the results of

GTG links no.23 – Jun 16

Unity's 2022 ESG report is out And here's a page with some highlights from it, though unfortunately in terms of absoute emissions we've seen the same rebound in emissions as others, with 2022 returning more to 'business as usual' after the prior two years of covid restrictions, less travel, etc.

Can we put a number on the game industry’s annual GHG impact? Part 1 – Game Development

This week saw World Environment Day, and lots happening to mark the occasion, from the Green Game Jam voting to the State of Green Software report. I spent the day digging into another great report on the shortfall in climate funding for the most exposed (and least responsible) parts of

GTG Links No. 22 – May 30th

Riot Games 2022 impact report Riot have released their 2022 annual impact report (direct link to PDF here) with a first-time full scope 1-3 disclosure of their emissions. Notably, there's no disclosure of Scope 3, category 11 "Use of sold products" (gamers playing Riot games, in other words) which is

A quick survey on GTG + barriers to greater sustainability in games

A short one this week as life, once again, has gotten in the way of longer writing. 💡Incidentally – if you know anyone looking to buy a really nice, beautiful old house in Western Sydney, you know how to reach me I've been meaning to do a survey of GTG readers

GTG links no. 21 – 15th May

Sony’s Earth Day update on its enviro plans More use of recycled and reduced use of plastics, and a bit on console energy efficiency: Energy used by consoles in the home constitutes SIE’s largest source of carbon emissions. We estimate that in total, the energy used by PS4

What do high FPS, high graphics settings do to console energy consumption?

Console gaming has gotten much more sophisticated in the past decade. Not only are there more consoles and console sub-generations that people are playing across, but the TV screens they’re plugged into vary more as well. We have HD & 4K resolutions, high-dynamic range (HDR) output options, and high Hz

GTG Links No. 20 – April 21st

We're celebrating Earth Week by poring over new environmental data from some of the biggest games companies in the world ESG season 2023 has properly kicked off Lots of releases since we last checked in (and a few we hadn't swept up yet). Haven't had the chance to dive too

What’s the game industry’s plastic footprint?

Hello! Quick little note at the top before we dive into the main post – once again (and with absolutely zero warning) my book’s publisher is running a steep discount on Digital Games After Climate Change. It’s currently 75% off bringing it down to simply expensive rather than outrageous.

GTG Links No. 19 – April 8th

Welcome back to your one-stop-shop for news and analysis for the sustainable games industry. Let's jump right in. CDProjekt have published their annual ESG report First one out the gate for 2023 (unless I've missed an earlier one – please let me know if I have) and also the first time

Hey kid, wanna build a wind farm? (in Fortnite)

Way back in the dim dark ages of December 2000, a small offshore wind turbine was commissioned and began producing power just off the coast of Sweden. Tiny by todays standards, it consisted of just 7 pylons, each with a capacity factor dwarfed by the modern monsters of the renewable

GTG Links no.18 – March 17

The final week before the sound and fury of GDC kicks off. I wish I could say it was calm before the storm but this week (well fortnight) has seen a huge amount of news. Why we do what we do The image at the top of this post comes