Videogames, computing and the environment
By Olivia Poy (master student and researcher at ESI).
I think I will not be the first computer science student who entered the race with ideas of "I want to make video games in the future” and most likely I will not be the last. Although my time in the career has taught me that the world of computing has many more paths than I thought and, for one reason or another, I have put aside the idea of dedicating myself to the world of videogames, they still have a quite special place for me as a hobby.
Before entering the career, I invested the extra time I had (which I know was more than I have now) in video games and in my other favorite hobby, tabletop role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons, Cyberpunk, etc.) [one]. It was by comparing these two that I realized one thing. At first glance, tabletop RPGs consume large amounts of paper, both for annotations and printing, which left me feeling as if I had just cut down the Amazon itself as I left the printer with my 1 sheets of paper. printed. However, video games didn't seem to consume any resources and I've never felt bad for the environment after playing them.
Now, four years later, I have a clear answer to this question, Video games do impact the environment, just like any other software does.. To the "me" before I entered the race, this would seem crazy. How is something going to impact nature that doesn't even have a physical form?
The answer is that although the software does not have a physical form, it runs on hardware, which needs electricity to function correctly and the generation of this energy requires a high CO2 emission that ends up having a negative impact on the environment.
This cause-and-effect conclusion may seem a bit taken with a grain of salt going back so far into the electricity production cycle. However, there are already several studies that show that this is not the case and that the software has a greater impact than it seems at first glance.
To give a couple of examples, in 2022 more than 6000 billion daily searches in Google [2] and some 1000 billion hours of content every day [3]. It is estimated that to produce energy to cover this consumption, about 22500 KT/year of CO2 are emitted.
Taking into account that the video game market is growing at a great rate [4], we can affirm that they form a significant part of the world software. Therefore, a hobby that at first seemed to have no impact on the pollution of the planet, turns out to be that it pollutes a lot.
What can we do?
Seen this, We as IT professionals, what can we do?
- become aware
An important part of the fight against software pollution (and which is partly the reason for this article as well) is raising awareness that software pollutes and helping to educate others.
- Follow good practices
There are many research groups dedicated to understanding and trying to curb the impact of software energy consumption on the environment. Groups like the Green Team [5] from the research group alarcos (of which I am a part) try to discover good practices in software development that make the resulting software consume much less.
- Optimize
Anyone with any interest in video games has heard of video game optimization. Optimization issues are one of the causes of disastrous industry launches in recent years.
The mobile gaming industry seems to take this more into account as the battery consumption of mobile devices is more noticeable evidence to the naked eye than the power consumption of a computer. However, the rest of the video game industry seems not to give it the importance it deserves because video game development platforms like Unity or UnrealEngine make low-level things seen in career subjects like "Operating Systems" transparent to the programmer. and they do not always use the most optimal option. This is why if such platforms are used, an even more active effort should be made to try to optimize the resulting software as much as possible.
Does all this mean that we should stop playing video games because they pollute?
Not at all. Video games are a great source of entertainment that surely many of the students of the career appreciate to a great extent. The objective of becoming aware of the energy consumption of software is to try to develop software that is respectful of the environment.
Ultimately, to make the world better, that's what computer scientists are for.
References
[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juego_de_rol
[2] https://netbulbsocialmedia.com/noticias/estadisticas-seo-2022/
