Embracing Sustainability - Case Study: Gaming Industry

Why gaming? The gaming industry serves over 2.7 billion consumers worldwide. It has a vast influence reaching 1 in 3 people in the world. Being this large, this sector is a major contributor to environmental pollution. The hardware manufacturing process still relies mainly on fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) which are being increasingly taxed. So probably those who choose to stick to the "business as usual model" will become unsustainable.

Which benefits can change bring to the gaming industry?

This sector is facing unprecedented challenges and companies need to take action over the entire supply chain. A good start is to invest in recyclable packaging. This brings additional production costs with each package costing about 20c more, but companies will be swapping short term profits for long-term growth. Companies like Sports Interactive and Sega already presented fully recyclable packaging made with 100% recycled fibers, this saves them around 20 tons of plastic per year. Also, companies like GE, Unilever, Nike, IKEA, Toyota and Natura have already started to see the benefits of offering ‘green’ products and services, a $100 billion market. These companies' purpose-driven brands are growing at twice the rate of the rest of their portfolio.

Also, according to Inger Andersen, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Executive Director “The video games industry has the ability to engage, inspire and captivate the imaginations of billions of people across the world. This makes them a hugely important partner in addressing the climate emergency.”

There are a couple of initiatives worth highlighting such as Playing for the Planet, an alliance between some game companies (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft, Google Stadia, Rovio, Supercell, Sybo, Ubisoft and WildWorks) who have made voluntary, ambitious, specific, and time-based commitments for people and planet. The Alliance intends to support companies in sharing learning and monitoring progress on the environmental agenda. Another initiative is E-line: winner of numerous awards in the gaming industry. They develop games with environmental and impact focused themes (e.g. Beyond Blue: an ocean exploration game developed in partnership with BBC Blue Planet 2 and OceanX.

Another aspect that seems to bring benefits to the business is to adopt Life Cycle Thinking. It is known that the life cycle of products can be greatly optimized by shifting to digital, a growing market(figure 1). Not only would it reduce production costs and environmental impacts, but would also reduce costs due to more versatile subscription models with high personalization and lower costs.

Figure.1 – Breakdown of computer and videogames sales from 2009 to 2017 in US

Even though one barrier to the shift to digital is some customers’ preference for physical copies and their ability to buy and sell them at cheaper prices, innovations in subscription models can overcome it by providing cheaper alternatives(e.g. Netflix vs Blockbuster).

It seems that if companies commit to tackling these issues and embrace sustainability, they sure will have a much brighter future by becoming resilient to the biggest economic and social changes that are coming.