Gaming as an industry and culture has a huge impact on the environment.

A research lab funded by the California Energy Commission released a report titled “Green Gaming: Energy Efficiency without Performance Compromise” that calculated that video game playing consumes a staggering 75 billion watts every year — the equivalent of over 2 million cars. High end, graphically intensive games demand tremendous computing power for the real time calculations of physics, AI, and 3D graphics that players want. As a result, gaming PCs, home consoles, and even mobile devices gamers use have demanded more and more energy to drive them. How green that energy might be depends on the end user’s location and how their municipality generates electricity.

The IGDA Climate SIG serves to establish grassroots climate councils on every major game company and amplify the UN Environment’s message about youth advocacy, the power of video games, the climate crisis, and what games can do.

Core Pillars

• Raise awareness. Build industry knowledge of and community engagement around the impact of video games on the environment.
• Promote efficiency. Develop and advocate for power-saving software design patterns for video games.
• Enable great content. Develop and advocate for creative design guidelines and best practices that support climate-positive elements in games.
• Unlock behavioral transference. Support player and developer understanding of how gameplay experiences can translate into real world outcomes.

As an initiative aligned with the United Nations’ Play for the Planet Alliance, the Climate SIG is pursuing collaboration on projects that can help build power-saving software design patterns; support climate-positive elements in games; and unlock the potential for gameplay experiences to translate into measurable real world outcomes.

Join the growing video game climate champion movement and learn how you can engage your studio in forming a climate council supported by the UN Environment’s Education & Youth group!

For more information on the community, our active workstreams, and resources we’ve published to date, go to www.igdaclimatesig.org!

To join our Discord, go to tinyurl.com/IGDAClimateSIG !