With a secondhand solar panel, a battery and a Raspberry Pi minicomputer, indie game developer Kara Stone got the server powering her games running for just a few hundred dollars. When people point out that cloudy days could leave the server unpowered and her games inaccessible, Stone says that’s part of the point.
“We can’t expect everything to be constantly available to us 24-7, and it’s OK that things are temporarily up and then down,” Stone said.
To further reduce its carbon impact, her next game, Known Mysteries, uses highly compressed video footage to shrink its data footprint. In stark contrast to the ultra-high-definition images found in today’s top-tier games, the visuals are as fuzzy as videos from old Encarta CD encyclopedias. Unlike modern big-budget titles, which often top 100GB, an early version of her game was just 200MB in size — intentionally constrained game design, resulting in lower impact on the climate.
Stone is one of a growing number of game developers taking climate responsibility into their own hands. The gaming industry has been slow to recognize that creating and playing video games consumes a lot of energy and produces emissions — which contributes to climate change. Advocates for more sustainable game development argue video games must reduce their impact on the planet.
And while the video game industry is paying more attention to sustainability, only a portion of gaming companies release climate impact data. Even fewer account for how much energy is used by gamers around the world.
Read more: After Climate Change, What Does a ‘Livable Future’ Look Like?
Righting the ship
Every year, tens of thousands of game developers converge on San Francisco to meet at the Game Developers Conference. They swap business cards and meet over potential partnerships in between panel presentations where peers share contacts and lessons learned in the brutal, competitive world of game development. At this year’s GDC in late March, hidden in the packed schedule of hundreds of events were a handful dedicated to climate change.
The most high-profile event was Microsoft’s showcase for a new software toolkit. Named the Xbox Developer Sustainability Toolkit, it guided developers to clean up their games’ performance, which can result in more effective energy consumption. Microsoft has also implemented a number of updates allowing players more control over the energy consumption of their home consoles.
Given how performance and visuals tend to be fetishized by players (and games media), the competitive logic is to maximize at all costs. But shifting player attitudes in favor of climate-saving efforts has opened a door for Microsoft to find a way to reduce player-side emissions by empowering developers to improve efficiency in their games.
“It’s the first time that game developers have ever had real-time energy and emissions measurement tools in their hands,” Trista Patterson, Microsoft’s director of sustainability, told CNET. Patterson assumed the role after co-founding Playing for the Planet, an alliance of games companies that have made sustainability pledges.
The testing kit works like this: Devs can run through a game in progress, play a segment while watching the energy use and dive straight into the code from there.
Microsoft had Halo Infinite developers use the Sustainability Dev Kit to look for energy savings, and they discovered that lowering resolution and frames-per-second in areas players would least notice, like pause screens and menus, could save up to 55% of power without players noticing.
Microsoft is making the kit available to developers working on games outside PC and Xbox. When Xbox met with producers at Ubisoft to talk about the Sustainability Dev Kit, ideas were kicked around about future eco-modes in games to help lower consumers’ monthly energy bills and spotlight games’ low emissions to appeal to conservation-minded gamers, Patterson said.
Given Patterson’s experience at Playing for the Planet, it’s no surprise that she sees the possibility for the industry to unite and save itself. Gaming “is a wonderful artistic medium able to create alternative ways of looking at a problem,” Patterson said. Preserving games keeps alive a creative and joyful outlet for many, which is crucial in dark times, Patterson said.
“Play is the antidote of doom,” Patterson said.
Of the console makers, Microsoft is most focused on climate-related energy — or at least has made the most headlines doing so. As CNET Science Editor Jackson Ryan noted, giving players an optional software toggle probably won’t save much energy and seems like more of a PR stunt. Yet the company has given players options to reduce their own footprint, like with its new Xbox controllers made of recycled materials.
That’s still more deliberate action than platform holders like Sony and Nintendo. Both companies release corporate social responsibility reports that outline their respective actions toward sustainability. Nintendo, for instance, has a list of conservation regulations in countries where it operates that it complies with, but no clear overall strategy to reduce emissions.
“Reducing our environmental impact is one of our four global CSR priority areas and will continue as we work to advance these initiatives,” read an official statement provided to CNET by Nintendo.
Sony, on the other hand, has pledged to use 100% renewable energy in its internal operations by 2030. The company also aims to reach carbon neutrality across its entire operation by 2040, which includes making products and shipping them through supply chains, but it’s unclear if Sony also includes player emissions in this calculus.
Read more: How These 24-Ton Bricks Could Fix a Huge Renewable Energy Problem
