Hello everyone! Hope you’ve had a good week thus far and welcome back to my blog 🙂
For this week’s post, I figured tackling the topic of video games and their impact on the environment would be a good start. In particular, video gaming’s energy consumption and carbon footprint.
When thinking about the culprits behind climate change, one might not think of video games. I know I didn’t! But in fact, video gaming has a larger carbon footprint than meets the eye. Did you know that the energy consumed by video gaming consoles like the Playstation 4 and computers are estimated to be a whopping 34 terawatt-hours annually, which believe it or not, is comparable to the energy used by 5 million cars! I mean, I’ve always known that computers and video game consoles are somewhat energy-intensive but these numbers shocked me.
But as I think about it now, this should be no surprise considering that the average gamer spends about 6 hours gaming per week. This made me wonder, due to the circumstances of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, a lot more time would have been spent at home especially with companies encouraging working from home and schools adopting online classes. Would this have resulted in an increase in time spent gaming?
With the help of friends in the gaming community, I ran a poll where out of 35 respondents, 82.9% agreed that they have been spending more time gaming due to the COVID-19 situation. Now that can’t be good news for this year’s energy consumption (for the gaming industry at least).
Furthermore, game companies today are starting to stray away from games being a singleplayer experience towards a multiplayer one. Take Monster Hunter: World, for example, where players can team up in groups of four to slay big scary monsters. Being a popular franchise, Monster Hunter: World garnered a record high of 334,684 players in 2018. While being able to play games together with your friends online may be an exciting experience, it sure isn’t for our environment. This is because the entire multiplayer aspect is only made possible thanks to the use of servers, which are responsible for connecting us to the Internet, and providing us with things like Google and social media platforms.
Now, who provides us with these servers? Data centers of course! Considering how increasingly reliant we are on the Internet today, the energy usage of 205 terawatt-hours by data centers globally in 2018 surely would have increased.
I don’t know about you but I am seriously reconsidering the amount of time I devote to gaming, now knowing what an impact it can have. Perhaps I could invest in less energy-intensive computer parts? Time to do some scouting at Sim Lim mall…
Till next time!
Cheers,
Tricia
Hi Tricia!
That was an interesting read and hard to swallow… I was wondering if there’s a trade-off in using less energy-intensive computer parts (like slower performance, less efficient cooling system)? If so, it would be harder for you and other gamers to make that choice especially with the rising popularity in multiplayer games.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Lixuan
Hi Lixuan!
Thank you for checking out my post, I’m glad that you found it interesting! With regards to your question, I was wondering the same as well. I feel that in terms of trade-offs the main trade-off would be in terms of game performance. However, this could be mitigated by custom building your computer and tailoring it towards your personal wants versus buying a pre-built high-end gaming PC because unfortunately, higher-end PCs consume more energy than low-end ones.
As the overall energy consumption of a computer depends on the energy consumption of the different computer components, custom building would give you the advantage of choosing more energy-efficient parts. Take the AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs for example, which come with an Eco mode. When activated, it is argued to consume 44% less energy, which is a pretty big deal. When tested running games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it was found that there was almost no difference in terms of game performance with or without Eco mode turned on.
Additionally, more energy can be saved when it comes to choosing a power supply unit (PSU) where most come with an “80 plus” rating system accompanied by a range of colors to help determine its efficiency. For example, an 80 Plus Platinum PSU would be more efficient than an 80 Plus Bronze PSU.
However, the greatest limitation to me would be the graphics card, which is the most integral component when it comes to gaming. Since the graphics card serves to render the visuals and animations in games, as games become more graphically-intensive, the newest and most advanced graphics cards are usually sought after (especially if you want to play triple A games).
But graphics card aside, the customization of other computer parts for a more eco-friendly PC is very possible though it may be a time consuming and costly job. (but there are custom building PC services out there so don’t fret if you don’t know how to build a PC) I guess the main issue would be taking the time to think about whether would you really need such a high tier graphics card/CPU rather than just buying the latest high-end pre-built computer if you’re not planning to play any intensive triple A games and intend on just chilling in Minecraft or Stardew Valley haha.
Hi Tricia,
I have a question / suggestion (you can publish this comment).
What do you think of the idea of gauging how some information about the environmental impacts of gaming is received by gamers ? For example, if you were to ask people to read an article or watch a video or even read your blog post and then ask if this information alters their intentions with regard to how much they play video games ?
I also wonder if ppl who are diehard gamers differ from the general population in their environmental consciousness. Like, does spending all those hrs indoors gaming affect how willing a person is to practice conservation behaviours.
These are just some questions your topic raises for me. What sorts of investigations are you thinking about ?
jc
Hi Dr Coleman,
Thank you so much for the thought provoking comment because honestly I didn’t think of these questions and my plan for future blog posts were more centred around my own perspective. Nonetheless, I’d like to thank you for the suggestion because it gave me the idea of conducting a mini podcast/interview with a couple of my gamer friends to gain some perspective from people who play video games much more than me. I am also looking into discussing how some video games incorporate devastating effects of climate change into their narratives!
Cool ! Can’t wait.