{"id":19365,"date":"2022-09-16T20:30:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T18:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonpote.com\/?p=19365"},"modified":"2022-09-19T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T07:52:00","slug":"metaverse-video-game-studios-warn-of-environmental-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonpote.com\/en\/metaverse-video-game-studios-warn-of-environmental-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaverse: Video game studios warn of environmental impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the Metaverse craze grows, video game developers are calling on stakeholders to take responsibility for the ongoing environmental crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the burial of thousands of Atari E.T. game cartridges<\/a> in a New Mexico desert. Following the commercial failure of this game, which marked the end of the Atari era, the video game industry became more professional, first driven by Japan and then further by the United States. Like any successful sector, the field grew exponentially, increasing its material and energy footprint in the process. Games have grown in size from a few kilobytes to over 100GB in some cases, a factor of one million! Game platforms have seen their power explode<\/a> from 10W to over 700W for high-end consoles and computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, video games have become an industry whose revenue of USD$180 billion in 2020<\/a> has surpassed that of cinema, music, and even sports. The development of this industry has resulted in the sale of hundreds of millions of consoles, computers, graphics cards, and of course billions of copies of games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent months, the people developing these games have been hired in large numbers to design the “Metaverse”. Indeed, the creation of virtual worlds in real-time 3D has been at the heart of video game development expertise for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Metaverse, or the advent of a permanent immersive real-time 3D internet, raises more questions than ever about the impact of digital technology. Indeed, two reports by the Shift Project<\/a> and the Green IT collective<\/a> estimate that in 2019 digital technology accounted for around 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), with a staggering growth rate of almost 6% per year. Six percent is a doubling in just over a decade. At this level of impact, actions like “deleting our emails and cutting off WiFi” are purely symbolic, and insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goal of a 5% annual drop in emissions by 2050. In addition to emissions (which make up 11% of the digital footprint in France), there is increased demand for mineral resources (52% of the digital footprint in France).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2021 Green IT report<\/a> estimates that each year, the raw materials displaced by digital services in the EU-28 are roughly equivalent to the weight of all living human beings on earth (571Mt of resources, minerals and metals). Not to mention the generation of ionising radiation, which accounts for 28% of the environmental footprint of digital services in France, according to ARCEP<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video game industry – and tomorrow’s Metaverse – is a cutting-edge field. Straddling the line between culture and digital technology, the field calls on talents from fields as varied as 3D modelling, programming, sound design and ergonomics. The specific constraints of this medium make it very difficult to produce in “real time”. Every second, at least 30 image frames have to be generated so that the experience remains as fluid as possible for the audience. In the case of “virtual reality” (VR), this can even reach 90 frames per second. This rapid chaining of images, which requires a lot of data and computing power, leads to very high energy consumption, much more so than “traditional” video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Metaverse is at the crossroads between a culture of optimisation (both software and artistic) and a race for power. Here we find two of the main features of productivism. Real time video gaming, the Metaverse, is the Formula 1 of digital technology, an engine that is driving consumption in many areas of technology. Raja Kudori of microprocessor manufacturer Intel estimates that it will be necessary to multiply computing capacity by a factor of one thousand<\/a> in order to provide Metaverse services!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some years now, the temptation to abstract the user hardware to the cloud has been growing, at the same time as the cost of individual hardware has limited the expansion of that market (\u20ac2,000 to \u20ac5,000 for a state-of-the-art gaming computer). One way to shift away from personal gaming hardware is via Cloud Gaming. Cloud Gaming is the outsourcing of some of the computing power and energy costs and potential nuisance associated with it. Imagine: instead of running your games on a high-end computer at home, you run them on a server in a data centre and just “stream” the game images to your machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Add to this the normalisation of “Game As A Service<\/a>” among AAA project developers (the biggest projects on the market, running on the most powerful machines), and the trend is clearly towards a “Netflixisation” of the field. This could lead to over-consumption<\/a>, quickly cancelling out any possible energy efficiency gains from centralisation. However, given the need for very high-end hardware, particularly in the Facebook Meta vision focused on VR, access to the Metaverse could also take the form of a streaming service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cisco forecast<\/a> showed that streaming UHD video in VR would increase network bandwidth requirements by a factor of 30 compared to current cloud gaming techniques. Therefore, interacting in this way through the Metaverse would likely be a huge energy drain. Moreover, unless we imagine a world of permanent confinement, there is little chance that the Metaverse will replace <\/em>holidays, meetings, conferences or face-to-face work. It will be an “extra” tool, stacking on top of current energy demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the energy demand of computation and data transfer, the massive growth of Metaverse in VR would generate the proliferation of new categories of physical products, ranging from virtual reality headsets to various simulation peripherals. These categories are already subject to rapid model obsolescence, driven by improvements in technical performance. It is not ecologically sustainable to produce these mountains of devices on a large scale, and we do not have the technical means to recycle them efficiently<\/a> (82.6% of digital waste is neither collected nor recycled in 2019).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The notion of “right tech” is now seriously at issue<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago, 5G mobile consumer technology was deployed en masse<\/a>, but its benefits were significant only for a few industrial cases. Similarly, apart from possible future cases making good use of Metaverse VR technology in a business environment, is it really necessary for everyone to buy power-hungry hardware or additional streaming subscriptions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the Mobile Metaverse could require the 6G envisaged in the French recovery plan<\/a>. For months we have experienced the challenges of extreme weather caused by climate change. The promise of the Metaverse could lead people even further away from the reality of their own senses and perceptions, moving instead into a kind of digital straitjacket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can still avoid repeating mistakes<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Facebook\u2019s announcement of the Metaverse has created a shockwave, stimulating many companies (in the midst of euphoria over possible future profits<\/a>) to commit to technology before even asking themselves what they intend to do with it. They don\u2019t want to miss the bus. But where is that bus going? It\u2019s time to ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a digital powerhouse with a strong cultural impact, the video game industry can influence ecological transitions: both through business, by charting a new path to technological responsibility, and behaviourally, by proposing stories and interaction systems that explore new narratives of society and relationships with the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians and decision-makers, it is high time you took an interest in this subject. Hardware manufacturers, a paradigm shift is needed: abandon the race for power as the only selling point. Gamers<\/a>, let’s encourage these new initiatives. Developers, it’s time to get our heads out of the sand and take responsibility for the great power of this medium. Let\u2019s develop the needed transition together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are at a crossroads. On the one hand, video games can help lead the way to technological responsibility and resilience, and to the exploration of the imagination. On the other hand, by further eroding our national and European digital sovereignty, it can become an additional tool to accelerate the degradation of living conditions on Earth. Let us hope that the future will show us that Ready Player One was merely dystopian fiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aware of the stakes, the following studios have committed not to develop for the Metaverse. Wherever possible, they intend to favour more responsible projects to explore new narratives:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n