Gaming and Warming — A Dangerous Play
Sometimes I feel like there should be another way to divide human history like in BC and AD, in order to consider the latest interventions which have changed human behavior like never before. Like ‘BG’ and ‘AG’, which can denote the eras before and after the advent of Gaming. Such is the kind of influence gaming wields on the current generation, irrespective of age and gender. I even feel that those parents, who were fortunate enough to bring up their children before gaming happened are a lucky lot since not many of their offspring were lost to this very deceptive menace which has taken over the lives of our younger generation now. Of late, the battle royale genre of games are most popular which test the survival skills of the digital alter-ego of oneself where the gamer himself/herself or in a group are evaluated for the cleverness, swiftness and deftness in eliminating all their opponents. The last man standing will be the winner. It is kind of a ‘kill-all to survive’ game. That the gaming industry is booming with reported revenues of $137.9 billion in 2018 in contrast to the reported revenue of the movie industry’s $41.7 billion in the same year says a lot about the soaring popularity of gaming. On a lighter note, there was news about a couple getting hitched while playing a popular battle royale game. The irony is that after getting married they ditched the game. Perhaps each of them wanted to last the game of marriage together. I try not to be a morality monger here, but the truth has to be told any ways. I am not going to talk about how detrimental gaming is on the personal front. There is an equally disturbing aspect about gaming which is harmful to our planet, which is what this article is about.
Apart from the all too visible toxic effect gaming has on people, it also has a dangerous side-effect which is looming on our planet with its increasing role in climate change. The internet is invariably one of the most power gobbling sectors globally. Take for example a simple search we do on Google. Google itself estimates that a typical search on its search engine ends up consuming energy equivalent to illuminating a 60-watt light bulb for 17 seconds which corresponds to 0.2 grams of CO2 emission. Translate it into 2 trillion search requests the search engine giant executes every year (on a minimum), the total CO2 emission reaches 400 thousand tonnes of CO2 per year. This data is from 2009 and much has changed since then. Google’s power efficiency would have increased, and so have the number of searches per year. Facebook in 2016 admitted that its operations resulted in 718,000 metric tons of CO2 which is equivalent to annual CO2 emissions from 156,000 cars. However, the internet is not about search or social media only.
Among other energy intensive activities you can inadvertently do on the internet, video streaming and gaming stand out because of the intensity at which they guzzle power. There were more than 2.3 billion active gamers in the world in 2018. That is roughly 30% of the world’s population. The gamer of today come equipped with gadgets of all sizes and capacities that they use to have dominion over their virtual worlds. These gadgets include beefed up gaming PCs, normal PC’s, gaming consoles or mobile devices like mobile phones or tablets. The heaviest of the heavy gamers or “Pro” as they call themselves now-a-days, play games on gaming PCs which are among the most energy intensive ones. A typical gaming computer (including display) is estimated to use approximately 1400 kWh/year, which is equivalent to the energy use of ten game consoles or six standard PCs or three refrigerators. It is estimated that PC gamers use about 75 billion kWh of electricity a year which is comparable to the electricity consumed by 7 billion LED light bulbs running 3 hours per day; that is one LED bulb for almost every individual in this world. Hard-core gamers use around 600 million gaming consoles globally with an average energy consumption of 134 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year. Even with moderate usage, the total energy consumption by gaming consoles annually will be in the range of 80.4 billion kWh. That kind of electricity usage will result in the emission of 28.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to the annual emissions of 6.1 million cars. That’s for the negative impact PC and console gaming has on our planet.
All the apps and all the games which are jam-packed into your phone are not good for the planet as they are the data guzzlers. Data centers which facilitate this data flow are among the biggest power guzzlers of our time. Their insatiable thirst for power is one of the main reasons behind the unsustainable fast growth in the emissions across the world. Video streaming accounted for 58% of all internet traffic in 2018. There is no verifiable data to account for the data traffic due to mobile gaming, but going by the current trends, it is safe to assume that it also contributes to the data center related emissions significantly. Ultimately we, who use data, are responsible for these emissions.
Google Stadia is the new cloud gaming service from Google which has the capacity to replace the gaming consoles and high-end gaming PCs. With Stadia, the cloud will hold everything for you and with the help of an internet connection you can access it from anywhere and play any game. You can play even the top-end games which are very demanding in terms of graphics on any low spec gadget. Soon, any device will be able to stream any game in real-time for you, even your low-end mobile phone. You need not buy the high-end tools for top-end games. Google Stadia is going to revolutionize the internet gaming arena and is sure to lure more gamers due to its accessibility. Other tech giants are also vying for a piece of this lucrative pie. Microsoft had also announced their cloud based real-time game streaming service called xCloud last year and demoed it last month. It might be music to the ears of gamers, but it is not good for our planet as it could possibly multiply the game related emissions many fold due the increased data traffic. Google and Microsoft have to be given credit for using renewable energy sources for their data centers. However, the huge demand for cloud-based gaming could stretch their abilities to keep things green thin and they might be forced to switch back to coal based power to meet this demand. This will not augur well for our planet as it could cause a surge in game based CO2 emissions.
Inspired by the Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, thousands of teenagers skip school and are out on the streets every Friday in different parts of the world. They call out to the politicians and other decision makers to amend policy decisions to ease the changing climate and to secure their future. Extinction Rebellion (XR) group is another sociopolitical movement which uses nonviolent resistance to protest against climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse. XR wants the United Kingdom to commit to zero net emissions by 2025 and are on the streets of London protesting in recent weeks. More than a thousand XR protesters were arrested in London recently. I completely agree with the motives of the teenagers on the street as well as with that of the XR group. In this era of indifference, it is heart-whelming to see young people stand up for a cause which is so very critical to the survival of our planet. But, they can do a lot more. Gaming is an unnecessary evil which we can dispense off if we have the will to slow down climate change. I suggest that the protesters, particularly, the teenagers can adopt a new form of protest by desisting from playing games online. They can inspire their friends and relatives too to do so and if the movement against games catches on, it can do lot more good to the planet by reducing GHG emissions. Authorities will start looking at the protesters differently with a new found respect if they show that they not only talk the talk, but they walk the walk too.
Not in Fortnite, not in PUBG, but in the real game of life, let us become Pros!
