#48 - Greening the video game industry with Ben Abraham and Maria Wagner
Update: 2024-11-12
Description
3 billion gamers worldwide, billions of devices, terabytes of data streamed, the gaming industry comes with pretty big numbers starting with its $455 billion sales in 2023.
Is its environmental footprint as big? (Not) fun fact, not a single executive in this sector could answer the question.
A new non-profit initiative, the Sustainable Gaming Alliance, is trying to get these numbers right and to equip the industry with the right framework. Its Managing Director, Maria Wagner, and its Research and Standard lead, Dr Benjamin Abraham joined this Green IO episode where great insights were shared on:
- 👿 The periodic table of torture for gaming device,
- 🖼️ The Gaming industry dependency on graphics to boost its sales
- 🕹️ Why “this game is beautiful” should be replaced as a praise by “this game is so enjoyable”
- 📋 Why GHG protocol is not adapted to the gaming industry
- 🌋 How to shake up a multi-billions industry in 10 weeks ?
- 🔄 Why the project mode in the game industry - and elsewhere? - doesn’t help a GreenOps culture to flourish
- 😴 Energy consumption at idle state
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Ben and Maria's sources and other references mentioned in this episode:
- The Sustainable Gaming Alliance Website
- The SGA youtube channel (with recorded workshops and interviews)
- The SGA discord channel
- SGA - How it all started: 10 weeks to save the games industry
- Greening the Game Industry, Ben’s newsletter
- Benjamin’s book “Digital Game after Climate Change”
- Wattwise the game jam dedicated on the energy consumption of video games
- Godot game engine
- Unreal game engine
- Digital Collage workshop
- Nature article on climate protests
- Giovanni’s Celeste game
- Thomas Beaufils’ newsletter “Tales from the Tech”
- Signatories against gaming in Metaverse
Transcript (automatically generated)
Ben (00:00 )
the idea that the gaming industry globally has a footprint probably the size of a country like Sweden.
was just on no one's kind of radar. My best guess is that it's somewhere in the tens of millions of tons. The disclosures that I've added up over the last couple of years from the biggest game companies in the world point to a figure somewhere around about 20 to 50 million tons per annum.
Gaël Duez (00:24 )
Hello everyone, welcome to Green.io. I'm Gael Duez and in this podcast we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time. Twice a month, on a Tuesday, our guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability. And because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green.io,
All the references mentioned in this episode as well as the full transcript will be in the show notes. You can find these notes on your favorite podcast platform and of course on the website greenayo.tech.
I'm all in mushrooms at the moment. This is how a few months ago Giovanni Celeste started to describe his new game. He kept on. They're incredible and you can tell great stories with them. Of course, to be more mainstream, the first part of my new game is about bees. But I'll do scenes with mushrooms. Giovanni is a pillar of the small but vibrant gaming sector in Réunion Island where I live.
He crafts games focusing on the ecological transition. He works either with a small team or by himself. He's what is called an indie developer. Before our discussions, I hadn't realized how diverse and complex the gaming industry was. For me, it was mostly massive studios delivering entertainment to more than three billions of gamers worldwide.
or discussions, reactivated a question I had in the back of my mind for some time. How is the gaming industry doing with its environmental footprint? With massive data transfers, billions of devices sold, and all of the computing power used to develop and run the games, it cannot be negligible. Thomas Bouffis, from the Tales from the Tech newsletter, pointed out to me several signs showing a modest interest in the sector.
Starting with very few C-level offices exclusively in charge of sustainability in the main studios. Sure, here and there some initiatives are emerging such as a petition against developing games in the metaverse, the ongoing work of the French agency ADEME on a referential for sustainable gaming, or what was the active game jam on the energy consumption of video games.
Still, most of the buzz is about the gaming industry helping to raise awareness on climate change and ecological transition, almost nothing about its own
This is where Giovanni told me about the Sustainable Gaming Alliance. And voila, I eventually found experts to discuss the gaming industry environmental footprint.
Maria Wagner and Dr Benjamin Abram respectively the SGA Managing Director and SGA Research and Standard Lead kindly agreed to answer my questions about the footprint and more importantly what a tech worker in the game industry sector should do about it. Ben has written an entire book on the topic digital games after climate change based on his PhD work. Maria's personal story could be the scenario for a video game.
Before becoming a seasoned actor in the gaming industry, she worked in diplomacy, intercultural conflict management, as a political observer in Syria, or ran a refugee camp. Wow,
the perfect fit to run a global multi-stackholders initiative to green a 455 billion dollar market.
Gaël Duez (04:00 )
So welcome Ben, welcome Maria. It's great to have you on the show today.
Ben (04:06 )
Thanks, Gael. It's great to be here.
Maria Wagner (04:06 )
Thanks for having us.
Gaël Duez (04:09 )
You're welcome. Just to understand a bit the context before deep diving into the environmental footprint of the gaming industry and the many, many, different topics that I'd like to cover with you. What make
Gaël Duez (04:24 )
The gaming industry is so specific within the tech industry. And how come that we usually don't incorporate in the big green software, green IT, sustainable IT, you name it, momentum, which is happening around the world, what is related to the gaming industry itself. And as I said in my introduction, the gaming industry is pretty big, both in terms of a number of gamers, employees and workers.
So I guess in terms of footprint as well. Maria, you're a very knowledgeable person of this industry. Could you maybe try to give us an answer?
Maria Wagner (05:00 )
Yeah, I think the games industry is very special when it comes to the connection to the people and of course also the reach, right? As you have said, we are reaching basically half of the globe and this is something which a lot of people forget that we are the medium of
the times. So compared to movies and films or the TV, there is no other medium which reaches so many people and I think this makes us really special.
Gaël Duez (05:33 )
It's a question of reach according to you more than the technical setup behind it.
Maria Wagner (05:38 )
The technical setup behind it, of course, as well, I would say it's way more complicated because it connects so many different parts when it comes to games. There are so many parts which
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