Greening the Games Industry (Page 6)

Greening the Games Industry

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The cover image from EA's 2022 impact report, showing rendered coloured shapes – blue, green, turquoise

GTG Links No.10 - October 21st

This year has gone at lightning pace, and there's now a mere 64 days till Christmas. As Norther Hemisphere readers start to rug up, enjoy the cooler weather, here at GTG we are preparing for our third summer in a row of wild, wet, La Nina driven weather.

MIGW Recap: Everyone’s thinking about sustainability, just not that kind (yet)

I spent last week down in Melbourne for International Games Week, speaking at both GCAP and G4C conferences and attending a few of the other events like Freeplay’s wonderful Parallels showcase. It was a fantastic week, catching up with many old friends and a ton of new ones. Across

GTG Links No.9: September 30th

GTG Links No.9: September 30th

A lot going on with some pretty neat news. Let's dive on in. iOS 16 to get emissions optimised charging iOS 16 to Gain ‘Clean Energy Charging’ Option Later This YearIn an update coming to iOS 16 later this year, Apple plans to add a new “Clean Energy

Net Zero and the games industry: Unpacking the United States 2050 strategy

Net Zero and the games industry: Unpacking the United States 2050 strategy

By now, most will be familiar with the idea of net-zero targets. These are goals set by governments around the world for countries to achieve zero annual emissions, usually around 2050. Some are binding through legislation, some are aspirational, and some are simply attempts to neutralise domestic political issues (looking

A man walks through muddy flood waters water with a child on his back, leading two other children.

GTG links No. 8 – September 9th

When I started collecting news and links to articles relevant to greening the games industry I was a little concerned that I would sometimes not have enough to fill out a decent sized post. Thankfully, this has never been the case, and I find it an incredibly encouraging sign of

AfterClimate is a new way to green the games industry

A big part of what I’ve been concerned with here over the past couple of months (and in my book before that) has been the big picture challenges facing the whole of the games industry – from the energy demand baked into next-gen consoles, to the need for faster electricity

Old games consoles filled with dirt, planted with succulents and herbs.

GTG Links No.7 – August 19th

Just in time for the weekend – some reading on cloud gaming, device 'death dates' and a bunch of the latest impacts of heat and drought accross the world. Cloud Gaming is coming – but in what form? Xbox Cloud Gaming hourly usage increased by 1800% in the past yearA

A picture of the wing of an airplane, with an iPhone playing Taylor Swift's "Red", and a rocket taking off

Offsetting CO2 from flights: A Taylor Swift, Valve Company Holiday, & Richard Garriott Space Flight Special

An interesting little bit of news this week is a report from Yard that calculated the CO2 equivalent emissions from a bunch of celebrities' private jets. Taylor Swift comes in at number one: Yard's research found that Miss Swift is the biggest celebrity CO2e polluter of this

Three firemen hose down a red brick, two story building showing signs of fire damage to the roofing shingles.

GTG Links No.6 – July 29th

There has been so much climate, games and tech news this past fortnight I was tempted to do a links post last week. I don't want to overload anyone's inbox though, so let me know if you have a strong preference for longer or more frequent

What kind of work is climate advocacy in the games industry?

climate advocacy

What kind of work is climate advocacy in the games industry?

Climate advocacy – like the climate crisis itself – is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions. The contours of the crisis itself seem to demand several things at once: urgency, effectiveness, pragmatism, justice, even as these frequently seem out of reach. Just as we can recognise that the greatest burden to decarbonise rests

GTG Links no 5 – 2nd July

Last month Ubisoft released its latest update on its decarbonization journey and other environmental commitments. Lots of detail in here and in the 2022 annual report (PDF) – including a method of calculating WFH workers energy consumption that might help others in a similar situation. Might be just what I was

This is Ben Abraham – author of GTG and keeper of chickens

Announcement: Looking for work on new projects

Hello, this is not your typical GTG post, but I wanted to get the word out to subscribers and their networks that I am currently looking for work and have plenty of capacity for new projects. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had a few potential projects not

Energy efficiency and gaming’s tricky time-of-use problem

Energy efficiency and gaming’s tricky time-of-use problem

Earlier this month the International Energy Agency released a new report, outlining the case for a redoubled focus on efficiency as an enabler of 2050 net zero ambitions. Energy efficiency, as Wikipedia succinctly explains, is “the ratio between the useful output of an energy conversion machine and the input”. Vehicles

GTG Links No.4: 10th June

Weekend reading for the climate minded

How much electricity does indie dev use, and how can we find out?

How much electricity does indie dev use, and how can we find out?

At the top end of town, the games industry is waking up to the need to decarbonise, with many of the world’s largest game publishers and game development studios setting and making progress towards carbon neutrality and net zero goals. With the end of the financial year coming up,

GTG Links No.3 – 27th May

Saudi Oil money buying into Nintendo Will be interesting to see if this has any effect (good or bad) on the company's environmental strategy – Nintendo being the only one of the main 3 platformholders who still doesn't have a stated net zero goal (unless I have

4K & 8K Gaming and Energy Efficiency: How many pixels is too many?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what sorts of reasonable limits or regulations we could place on gaming hardware to reduce energy consumption and emissions. I haven’t written extensively on it yet (though there are some sections [https://twitter.com/selfbankt/status/1448991540815224832?s=20&t=nFXOAjrhefwcgF0UOMqNRw]

GTG Links No.2 – 13th May

Keeping with the theme of this week's post, news from the Japanese energy market Three big asset managers file joint climate resolutions at J-PowerThree European asset managers, including the largest, Amundi , said on Wednesday they had jointly filed climate-change resolutions at Japanese electricity generator Electric Power Development Co

A solar array about the size of a football field, with panels tilted away from the camera, on a sunny day on the way to Kyoto

Super Mario Sunshine: Nintendo’s 2019 CSR stuff up and Japan's Renewables mix

So there’s a pretty big error in my book that I was only recently made aware of. In Chapter 4 “How much energy does it take to make a videogame? [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-91705-0_4]” I gave Nintendo a pretty glowing review, as they seemed

A chart displaying Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for Unity taken from their first ESG report.

GTG Links No.1 – May 6th

Welcome to the first Greening the Game Industry end of week links round-up. This one ended up a little longer than expected, but there’s more news than usual. I’m hoping to keep these a little shorter next time. The links collected here will be the things I’ve

The European Union’s ‘Self-Regulatory Initiative to further improve the energy efficiency of Games Consoles’

The European Union’s ‘Self-Regulatory Initiative to further improve the energy efficiency of Games Consoles’

In the news last week was a British Gas report with some rather dubious numbers about the amount of electricity (and thus money) being wasted by “vampire devices” that use power when plugged in but not being used. The Guardian had a nice summary of the criticisms of the latest