Another Sign Of Decline

One of the things that catches my attention is when policy provisions push us toward having to use less useful or inferior products. Everything from gas cans that cannot be used to fill small engines without spilling gasoline (ironically required to prevent gas from spilling when filling a car), to toilets that don't work as well as those from several decades ago, washing machines and dishwashers that don't clean as well, substandard detergents and bug spray, etc., etc. The latest example I came across are plans for video games. CNET reports that "Video Games Are Finally Waking Up to Climate Change." The article begins (underline added):

    With a secondhand solar panel, a battery and a Raspberry Pi minicomputer, game developer Kara Stone got the server powering her games running for just a few hundred dollars. When people point out that cloudy days could leave the server unpowered and her games inaccessible, Stone says that's part of the point.

    "We can't expect everything to be constantly available to us 24-7, and it's OK that things are temporarily up and then down," Stone said. 

    To further reduce its carbon impact, her next game, Known Mysteries, uses highly compressed video footage to shrink its data footprint. In stark contrast to the ultra-high-definition images found in today's top-tier games, the visuals are as fuzzy as videos from old Encarta CD encyclopedias. Unlike modern big-budget titles, which often top 100GB, an early version of her game was just 200MB in size — intentionally constrained game design, resulting in lower impact on the climate.

 As the article goes on to discuss, some developers are beginning to take account of the "carbon footprint" (i.e., electricity usage) for both game development and game play by the consumers, as well as the "carbon footprint" for manufacturing and distributing games and game consoles. 

    Game makers aren't ignorant of what's happening. Some of the biggest companies have set sustainability targets. At the end of 2022, Abraham released a report focusing on the 33 largest publishers and studios in the industry that have set net-zero emissions goals. He found that 10 have ambitious plans to reach the milestone before 2030, including tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google, but also Ubisoft, Tencent and Riot Games. Sony has set a net-zero goal of 2040, while Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Konami and Sega have set theirs for 2050 — the bare minimum, Abraham said.

    "Anything less than that, you are basically committing to destroying the planet," Abraham said.

    Each of these companies has a different strategy for getting to net-zero emissions, including offsetting, or buying green energy credits to "cancel out" what's consumed in fossil fuel energy, a tactic seen by critics as a form of greenwashing. 

Others have different solutions. For instance, the article relates:

Microsoft had Halo Infinite developers use the Sustainability Dev Kit to look for energy savings, and they discovered that lowering resolution and frames-per-second in areas players would least notice, like pause screens and menus, could save up to 55% of power without players noticing.