Ruth Dorothea Eggel is a cultural anthropologist and digital ethnographer, currently exploring sustainable game development practices in the EU Horizon project “STRATEGIES – Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (www.strategieshorizon.eu) at the Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Her research concentrates on the ethnography of technosocial lifeworlds and the anthropology of play and games. Her dissertation, Embodying Gaming (University of Bonn 2024), explored the materialities and embodiments of gaming culture at gaming events in Europe. She was a lecturer at the Universities of Bonn, Graz, and Vienna and is co-editor of the journal Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur.
Co-Author:
Sonia Fizek is a professor of Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, and a visiting professor at the University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw (Poland). She is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Her latest book, Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), explores video game aesthetics, focusing on automation, AI, and posthuman play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on environmental sustainability in video games. She leads the “Greening Games” project (2021-2024) and is the scientific lead for “STRATEGIES. Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (2024-2027, https://www.strategieshorizon.eu).
Towards Greener Video Game Making Processes and Practices – People and the Planet
FROG 2024 – Talk
Depleting planetary resources, environmental collapse and the threat of a climate apocalypse are increasingly popular themes in video games. Game developers often introduce these eco-themes in bottom-up processes. Some games, like Terra Nil (Devolver Digital 2023), focus on building balanced ecosystems (Alfred 2022), while others, like the Riders Republic Rebirth event (Ubisoft 2022), use temporary features to draw attention to climate concerns (Sandifer 2022). This use of ecologically informed narratives, mechanics, and design tactics has been discussed in developer and research communities (Abraham & Jayemanne 2017; Chang & Parham 2017; York et al. 2022).
Two perspectives that remain relatively unexplored point towards a) development processes and b) development practices. The first presents a paradox: green-themed games still contribute to environmental destruction (Abraham 2020; Abraham 2022; Gordon 2019; Gordon 2020). The planetary impact of computer technology, the capitalist exploitation by large tech companies, and the extractivist logic (Cubitt 2016) in games and hardware production significantly contribute to climate change. The second perspective shifts attention to the making and makers of games, for which we raise the following core questions:
- How can sustainable game-making be achieved within an industry constrained by neoliberal frameworks and profit-driven motives?
- What are developers’ attitudes towards sustainability in games and the industry?
- What drives developers to make ecological games in the first place?
- How can challenges of hardware reliance and the mining of planetary resources be addressed in game development?
In this contribution, we map out those two fields of tension, proposing a collaborative research approach, including ethnographic fieldwork among selected game developers. Only direct observation allows deeper probing into attitudes, skills, resources, and challenges in creating green games and making games in greener ways. Our research is part of the EU Horizon project “STRATEGIES – Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (2024-2028), which aims to integrate sustainability into game design, production, and distribution. Collaborating with European game studios, we leverage their practical expertise to develop industry and policy recommendations to encourage and adopt sustainable game-making practices.
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