Sustainable Video Game Development : An exploratory literature review

Sammanfattning

This research report presents some practices game developers can adopt to reduce the environmental impact of video game consumption. These practices were obtained by performing an exploratory literature review using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, leading to a dataset composed of 14 sources. After analysing them, it appeared the environmental impact of video games can be mitigated first by optimizing them, but also by reshaping the trends in game development and consumption, leading to a new paradigm where games do not rely on ever-more powerful (and more energy-consuming) hardware. It was also observed that the video game industry, due to the lack of regulatory pressure, relies on voluntary environmental action within an indulgent scope. This is mostly due to the fact that the impact of video game consumption does not legally fall under the direct responsibility of the creator, and is as such optional to address for now.