Keynote slides from Dr Benjamin Abraham on games & extinction

1. Horizon Net Zero: How the global game
industry participates in extinction
Dr Benjamin Abraham 26th April 2024

2. About me
• PhD in human/nonhuman philosophy
• Started researching climate impacts of
games ~2015 – Digital Games After
Climate Change (2022)
• Founded AC to advocate and accelerate
climate action in the games industry
• Have worked with Unity, CDPR,
Keywords Aus, KO_OP, Paper House, Die
Gute Fabrik
• Now working with SGA on a standard
calculation method for games

3. What is causing extinctions?

4. IUCN Red List

5. IUCN Red List

6. Our species is responsible
“…the rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by
experts to be between 1000 and 10,000 times higher than the
“background” or expected natural extinction rate (a highly
conservative estimate). Unlike the mass extinction events of
geological history, the current extinction phenomenon is one for
which a single species - ours - appears to be almost wholly
responsible.” (p.1)
https://www.iucn.org/sites/default/
f
iles/import/downloads/species_extinction_05_2007.pdf

7. Differentiation of causes & responsibility
Major threats to biodiversity:
• Habitat destruction and degradation
• Over-exploitation (extraction, hunting,
f
ishing etc.)
• Pollution
• Disease
• Invasions of alien species (e.g. cats
and rats on islands)
• Global climate change (changes in
migratory species, coral bleaching)
https://www.iucn.org/sites/default/
f
iles/import/downloads/species_extinction_05_2007.pdf

8. Where and how do games exacerbate
climate change (and extinctions)?

9. Two main ways games worsen climate
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Resorce Extraction

10. The global climate context
• IPCC: we have warmed around 1.1
degrees above the 1850-1900
average
• 2015 Paris Agreement to keep
warming “well below 2ºC…
preferably below 1.5ºC”
• Govts make “nationally
determined contributions” and
choose how to approach
reducing their national emissions
Mills et al. 2019: all US gaming devices account for 2.4% of residential electricity – 24 MT/year CO2

11. Boehm, S., L. Je
ff
ery, J. Hecke, C. Schumer, J. Jaeger, C. Fyson, K. Levin, A. Nilsson, S. Naimoli, E. Daly, J. Thwaites, K. Lebling, R. Waite, J. Collis, M. Sims, N. Singh, E.
Grier, W. Lamb, S. Castellanos, A. Lee, M. Ge
ff
ray, R. Santo, M. Balehegn, M. Petroni, and M. Masterson. 2023. State of Climate Action 2023. Berlin and Cologne,
Germany, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC: Bezos Earth Fund, Climate Action Tracker, Climate Analytics, ClimateWorks Foundation, NewClimate Institute, the
United Nations Climate Change High-Level Champions, and World Resources Institute. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.23.00010.

12. Boehm, S., L. Je
ff
ery, J. Hecke, C. Schumer, J. Jaeger, C. Fyson, K. Levin, A. Nilsson, S. Naimoli, E. Daly, J. Thwaites, K. Lebling, R. Waite, J. Collis, M. Sims, N. Singh, E.
Grier, W. Lamb, S. Castellanos, A. Lee, M. Ge
ff
ray, R. Santo, M. Balehegn, M. Petroni, and M. Masterson. 2023. State of Climate Action 2023. Berlin and Cologne,
Germany, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC: Bezos Earth Fund, Climate Action Tracker, Climate Analytics, ClimateWorks Foundation, NewClimate Institute, the
United Nations Climate Change High-Level Champions, and World Resources Institute. https://doi.org/10.46830/wrirpt.23.00010.

13. Climate for business is shifting
• EU’s new CSRD
• California’s new mandatory disclosures
• Australia’s proposed mandatory disclosures
• Investor ESG expectations
• Employee explectations
• Civil society and ‘social license to operate’ expectations
• Corporate early movers (Microsoft, Apple, etc)

14. Where are the game industry’s emissions?
Game production
process (simpli
f
ied) >
• Development
• Hardware
• Publishing/
Distribution
• End use (players)
• Disposal
Johns, Jennifer. "Video games production networks: value capture, power relations and embeddedness." Journal of economic geography 6.2 (2006): 151-180.

15. One global cloud spend
prediction for 2023: $512.8bn

16. Global value chain emissions
• Development – 14-80m tCO2e disclosed in 2022 (Greece: 50m tCO2e)
• Hardware – ~50kg CO2e per PS4 x 100m sales = 5m tCO2e (lifetime-ish)
149kg CO2e per XB1X x ~58m sales = 8.6m tCO2e
• Publishing/Distribution – Aslan (2020) estimate of 270g per disc = ~1.75m
tCO2e
• End use (players) – 2019 US gamers: “34 TWh/year (2.4% of residential
electricity nationally)… 24 MT/year CO2” (Mills et al. 2019) Euro PS4
lifetime: 3.6m tCO2e
• Disposal – PS4 discs from 2000-18: 97,301 t of discs, or a stack of discs 9
km tall (5.6 miles), 663,436t of discs+cases

17. Supercell
CD Projekt RED
Mixi
Roblox
Epic Games
37 Interactive
Playtika
Playrix
Riot Games
NCSoft
Netmarble
Konami
Bandai Namco
Entertainment
Take-Two Interactive
Keywords Studios
Embracer Group
Electronic Arts
Activision Blizzard
NetEase
Ubisoft
Tencent
SEA Limited
Sony
Google
Apple
Microsoft
Nintendo
Square Enix
Perfect World
CyberAgent
Nexon
Aristocrat
Leisure
Unity
SEGA Sammy
WarnerBros
Discovery
Game Companies
Tech
Net Zero Snapshot 2023

18. NZ Snapshot: Findings
• Total emissions over 81 MILLION tonnes of total CO2 disclosed in 2022 –
cf. 2021 annual emissions of Libya (74.5m tCO2e, pop 7m) and Colombia
(91.7m tCO2e, pop 49m). 7-14m tCO2e, tech excluded.
• NB: disclosed emissions: corp. inventories often incomplete (Klaaßen &
Stoll 2021 found: “corporate reports omit half of the total emissions“)
• 81m tCO2e a year is 0.02% of the 380 Gt carbon budget left (for 1.5º) each
year, or 0.18% of the total amount if we keep emitting at 2022 levels
• The vast majority of disclosures did not include Cat 11 “Use of sold
products” in Scope 3 calcs. (Only ones: Bandai Namco FY22 & CDPR,
Sony, MS, and Apple)

19. Indie impacts
• For Die Gute Fabrik, produced a
climate report that looked at
emissions from WFH, travel, and
purchases
• Breakdown of emissions by source
• Compared to other indies + larger
AAA studios

20. Indie scale footprints
• Major sources:
f
lights, heating,
purchases
• All under 0.5t per employee
PER YEAR (Scope 1 & 2)

21. Producing indie games: how do they compare?
• Favourably
• Indie games are
probably “best” for
the planet
• But all emissions have
to reduce & cease
Do Indies have the power
to reduce their
emissions?

22. • MS & Epic reduced Fortnite
users energy consumption by
80MWh per day – same output
as Utgrunden Wind farm
(Sweden, 2000-2018)
• Lower FPS & res in menus was
all it too – potential for engine
integration
End user energy ef
f
iciency in focus

23. Who has the power to reduce emissions?
Employees have some control
but national energy grid, tech
debt, govt policy/support much
more signi
f
icant
Choice of suppliers?
Publishers/
f
inanciers/industry
expectations
around how
business is done

24. Who has the power to reduce emissions?

25. • The smallest footprints, and the
least ability to control them
• BUT they have visibility: to set
standards, audience expectations,
demonstrate best practice
• Moral vantage point: “if WE can do
this why can’t you?”
• Indie dev visibility > AAA dev
visibility
Indie cultural leadership
Only possible if they can survive

26. Beyond CO2: hardware environmental impacts
The integrated CPU/GPU of the Playstation 4

27. The PS4 APU contained all the circled elements

28. Magnesite mine in Liaoning province, China

29. Magnesite mine in Liaoning province, China
Mining in this region can release clouds of
magnesium oxide dust which “react with carbon
dioxide and water in air and soil, changing into
magnesium carbonate (MgCO3) and magnesium
hydroxide (Mg(OH)2), and in turn causing soil pH to
increase” (Wang et al., 2015: 90).

30. • What actually drives hardware upgrades, and how do we intervene?
• Consumer desire? (What creates those desires?)
• Corporate business imperative? (Sell consoles, or software? Platform
lock-in?)
• Genuine technological advancement? (PS5 Pro raytracing & FPS?)
• Sheer inertia????? Does the games industry know how to sell games
based on something other than “better graphics”?
The Hardware Upgrade Cycle

31. Graeme Kirkpatrick’s (2012) “Constitutive
Tensions of Gaming’s Field: UK gaming magazines
and the formation of gaming culture 1981-1995”.
The Hardware Upgrade Cycle
“The concept of gameplay marks the point at
which gaming bids for autonomy as a cultural
practice and subsequently it becomes the
philosopher’s stone of game creation…
After 1985… gameplay is opposed to things like
graphics, character, plot and so on.“

32. Hardware discourse

33. Hardware discourse

34. Luo, Yinyi, and Mark Richard Johnson. "How do players
understand video game hardware: Tactility or tech-
speak?." New Media & Society 22.8 (2020): 1462-1483.
Do gamers buy into hardware discourse?
“Gamers rarely understand their gaming
hardware through these marketing and
advertising discourses despite their high
visibility, instead framing the technology they
engage with in intimately tactile, and more
broadly contextual, terms.”

35. Conclusions
• Halting extinctions involves a
sustainability transition in all industries,
including games
• Indie games, “worse graphics”, etc.
• We need research that maps the political-
economy of hardware upgrades
• “The philosophers have only interpreted
the world, in various ways; the point is to
change it.” (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach)

36. Stay in touch
• @AfterClimate on Twitter
• Newsletter @ afterclimate.com.au follow the links