STRATEGIES researcher, Ruth Eggel will share her work on video game making processes and practices at FROG - Future and Reality of Gaming, 2024 in Vienna.
FROG – Future and Reality of Gaming 2024
Gaming the Apocalypse
While thousands of enthusiastic players are gathering annually at the Game Cityin the Vienna City Hall, the international conference “FROG – Future and Reality of Gaming” invites to an academic discourse on the subject of games and play. This year the conference is dedicated to connections between play & games, crisis and hope, and invites game scholars, creators, educators, students, activists and enthusiasts from around the globe to come together and reflect on the apocalypse through a lens of games & play.
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.