The industry organization Dataspelsbranschen has gone through the Swedish gaming industry's emissions and measures to reduce them.
It's fully possible to have almost zero emissions when it comes to direct emissions, says Dataspelsbranschen's sustainability manager Marléne Tamlin.
Now, game developers don't account for much emissions, according to the report only 0.015 percent of the Swedish industry's emissions, for an industry that accounts for 1 percent of the country's export.
Most of the emissions are instead caused by the services that game developers purchase, such as storage in server halls, but primarily by the energy consumed when games are played, and indirectly for producing computers, mobile phones, and TV game consoles.
It's not something the gaming industry can do on its own, it also requires global political efforts, says Marléne Tamlin.
But there are things game developers can do to reduce their emissions. Tamlin mentions fossil-free electricity in the office, ensuring that equipment is environmentally friendly and lasts for many years, and if possible, introducing energy-efficient game modes.
The most important thing is to make it easy. Most game developers in Sweden are small companies with fewer than ten employees. Then you don't have the opportunity to have a sustainability expert sitting all day counting climate emissions, she says.
Xbox, for example, has developed tools to reduce resolution and image updates in menus, and to make the screen darker during inactivity. In games like "Halo infinite" and "Call of duty", energy savings of 15-50 percent have been measured, which can have a significant impact when millions are playing.
Epic has also made a similar analysis of how to reduce energy consumption with simple means, including making the game less demanding. It is estimated to have saved 73 gigawatt-hours annually, equivalent to the production of several wind turbines.
Sources: Dataspelsbranschen, Epic
