July 4th, 2007

How to create games without destroying our planet

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Every day people are using more and more time and money in home entertainment such as games, movies and TV. While it’s all great and relaxing and makes us feel better about ourselves, in a sneaky way without us even noticing the amount of electricity needed to support this lifestyle is growing all the time.

In my day job I work as a game programmer so you can see where I’m coming from. I am using all my days in helping people spend money in something they don’t need but that will also speed up evil things like global warming and the energy crisis? That brings me to the big question: Is there a way to make more environment friendly games or do we really have to choose between our gaming sessions and the future of our planet?

I have collected a few tips that I think could reduce the problem and let us enjoy games even in the future:

  1. Reduce packaging: A standard game is delivered in a DVD case made of polypropylene plastic and sold through retail stores or Internet stores such as Amazon. This approach has two disadvantages: creating the package creates pollution as well as transporting the product to different stores around the globe. A good way to reduce the pollution created by the packaging would be to use recycled cardboard instead of plastic. If you want to go all the way and get rid of the pollution (and costs) created by transportation, the Internet is a great channel of distribution: it’s fast, (almost) free and green.
  2. Shorten playing times: As game developers we want to hook our player to the game so that she would spend endless hours in front of her computer. Online multiplayer games do this particularly well: some say that as many as 40% of all World of Warcraft players could be addicted to the game. These numbers are of course speculation, but it is well known that making the games addictive is something we aim for. What’s bad about this approach is however the amount of electricity consumed when a person plays her favorite game non-stop. Instead of creating long playing sessions we could try to make the games addictive in a different way so that although the actual playing sessions would be relatively short the player would want to come back often. Online browser based strategy games such as Travian do this quite well: everything in the game happens so slowly that it doesn’t require you to be playing all the time.
  3. Sell less games: This may sound controversial, of course we all want to sell as many new products as possible. And that’s not what I’m against. But think about it this way: if each game is distributed on a DVD, packaged in the standard case and so on, the amount of plastic is huge. If instead of selling a new game in a new package we could sell a monthly subscribtion to a game that evolves incrementally while our customers are playing it we could still make good money while selling less games - and save some nature.
  4. Focus on content: The software industry as a whole but games in particular are known for always striving for better graphics and performance and pushing the limits of reality. This forces the gamers to always buying newer and more energy-greedy game consoles or PCs. If we want to save this planet this needs to stop somewhere. Instead of always pushing out new games for new gaming platforms we should target the current machines and concentrate in content instead of the facade. This would not only be good for the nature but it could also be the one thing that makes games acceptable as a real art form just like movies and literature.
  5. Make smaller games: In addition to the power consumption we should also start considering file sizes again. It’s clear that the bigger the games get the more hard disk space is needed for storing them. And that in turn means more pollution in form of manufacturing hard drives but more importantly creates still more power consumption as the new hard drives need electricity as well. Same goes with the amount of data that is downloaded from the Internet. If we could make small games with great amounts of content that could be played from the browser we could be yet one step closer to saving our planet.
  6. Target a greener platform: Most of the energy consumption and pollution in the game business comes from the hardware and not the actual software, so it can feel out of reach for the average software guys like myself. But if you stop to think about it you realize that actually we do have all the power. It’s up to us to support or not support a gaming platform. And if our games are popular enough we can decide which consoles succeed and which don’t. By supporting Wii (17W) instead of Playstation 3 (380 W) you can save a great deal of electricity if your game turns out to be a hit. (I am in no way affiliated with Nintendo, but these figures make me think that I rather support them than the competition)

As usual, any additional ideas and tips are welcome.

I’m happy to see that online distribution is growing and innovative new games are being developed by indie game developers such as Kloonigames. Hopefully some companies will soon begin to see that being green could be a great trick for marketing their products. If not, maybe someone needs to start a new, greener game development studio.

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