This week, The Sustainable Games Alliance, a nonprofit made up of games industry professionals and environmental researchers, published a framework that any developer or studio can apply to make their games more sustainable. The Sustainable Games Standard, as it’s known, is the product of a year of work and collaboration with game companies and scientists. The goal? To make games “the most sustainable form of entertainment.”
It’s a lofty one for sure, especially considering that at this point the games industry has proven inconsistent at best when it comes to environmental matters. But the goal is to make the standard as accessible as possible so that a significantly greater number of companies can get on the same page. This, according to the Sustainable Games Alliance, will allow companies to “track emissions accurately within the game lifecycle, identify cost-saving, impact-reducing opportunities, comply with new global regulations, optimize energy use and battery life, reduce hardware load while improving performance, enhance player experience while lowering environmental impact.”
The standard, research lead Ben Abraham told Aftermath, necessitated some creative thinking to meet the unique needs of game developers.
“In terms of methodology, each one is a little bit different,” said Abraham. “I started with whatever already existed, talked to a lot of our member companies and some other contributing ones. We knew we needed a quick and dirty method for as many as possible, so where there's the option to make a ‘spend based’ calculation, we've put one in there. Those are good for fast and easy numbers, but they don't give you any control over the emissions, because the only way to reduce them is ‘spend less money,’ which you might not want to do if you're marketing your new game.”
This meant that in some cases, Abraham – alongside games industry experts – had to devise new methods entirely.
“Like the [section 3.11] use of sold products (mobile) component, which says ‘OK, phones have batteries, what if we measure the battery level at the start and the end of a game session, that will tell us how much power the game has used,’” said Abraham. “Because the use of energy at the battery doesn't actually directly generate emissions, we also have to trace it back to the source, which is grid electricity emissions. To get power from the grid there has to be a charger that converts AC to DC, and when you do that you get power losses, so you also need to account for that by adding some extra on top for charger losses.”
The Sustainable Games Alliance says that 30+ companies are already among its ranks – with standouts including Remedy, Starbreeze, and Colossal Order – and Abraham believes that more will inevitably jump on board now that the standard is out in the wild.
“It's so easy to join the SGA," said Abraham. "Companies literally only need to send an email and say ‘We want to join,’ and the board considers and approves their application. … We've been talking to several big games companies for a very long time, and a lot of them are on board with the goals of the SGA and the standard; they have just needed a big public reason to join. It's also a hard time to get any spending approved in the games industry, so we get it. It just takes time. I'm confident that we're demonstrating the value of what we're doing.”
