Eat the rich in Redfall, and you're practically halfway to net zero
Your latest digest of video game and climate change news from the past two weeks.
Welcome to the latest edition of Play Anthropocene!
Today is Tuesday, April 4, and we’re covering the latest developments in the world of video games and climate change. Happy reading!
Redfall’s political subtext features some blood-boiling climate commentary
The latest slate of Redfall previews hit the internet last month, and with it, some refreshingly forthright interviews with developer Arkan Austin’s Studio Director, Harvey Smith, who offered some fascinating insight into the game’s spooky conceit, and its connections to our present crisis.
In Redfall, players will be teaming up to release the titular New England town from the extractive grip of a vampiric coven, who initially took residence as wealthy venture capitalists seeking to extend their lifespan via experiments with human blood. Speaking to Inverse, Smith explained the inspirations behind Redfall’s vampires, and in doing so, highlights an important parallel with our real world environmental emergency…
“Monsters are always metaphors, and we live in a world where a tiny percentage of people are living greater than kings of old. Private jets, multiple mansions, islands… as they’re draining the life out of the world. Profits for a tiny group of people are historically high even as rivers are drying up. There are places in Texas where you literally can’t drink the water now. So vampires seemed like the perfect metaphor.”
Smith’s argument about the elite’s culpability in the climate crisis are not unfounded. It’s estimated that the world’s richest 1% produce twice the amount of carbon emissions than the poorest 50%, with the wealthiest 10% estimated to be responsible for half of global emissions in total. This ‘carbon footprint gap’ is growing every year, too, in concurrence with rising wealth inequality between the richest and poorest around the world, both within and between nations.
This reality is often overlooked in conversations around addressing the climate crisis, which - thanks to the propaganda and lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry (working in conjunction with, you guessed it, the super rich) - often focus on everyone ‘doing their bit’ to reduce emissions, regardless of income, status, or access to the means of more sustainable living. Individual action is a worthy endeavour, of course, but when just 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of carbon emissions, the pressure for such action ought to be weighted appropriately against the elites profiting at the top of that pollution pile.
In simulating the opportunity to take down its own cult of capitalist parasites one by one, then, Redfall offers a reclamation fantasy akin to a form of virtual catharsis; something which Arkane has always been good at, whether it’s systematically dismantling the ruling class in Dishonored, or mowing down hordes of Nazis in Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
Much of the subtext behind Redfall’s central conflict will be lost on many of the players who have just jumped in simply to have a good time vampire hunting with friends, no doubt. Nevertheless, it’s reassuring to know that Arkane hasn’t just thought about this stuff, but that studio heads like Smith are willing to bring it into the public conversation with a candour that is sorely needed from those with the platform to talk about it.
You can play Redfall on PC and Xbox later this year, from May 2nd.
Breaking down Microsoft’s efforts to make a more sustainable Master Chief
There was a lot of great sustainability talks at the 2023 Game Developers’ Conference last month, but this one from Microsoft and Xbox’s Halo studio 343 Industries particularly caught my eye for a couple of reasons. You can watch all eleven minutes of it above, although it’s not required watching for the bits I’m about to pick out and focus in on.
To start, it’s worth noting that the very first thing Xbox Program Manager Daniel Jacobs mentions is the rising coverage of the industry’s environmental footprint from the games media and wider press, and the subsequent responsibility that places on companies like Xbox to respond. This is a pretty neat thing to hear coming directly from an Xbox spokesperson, and certainly an encouragement for games media outlets to continue covering (or indeed expand their existing coverage of) this particular sphere of the industry going forward.
The main piece of the talk, however, is delivered by Producer Alex Le Boulicaut, explaining how the Halo Infinite team managed to reduce the game’s power usage by 15% simply by reducing the resolution of the background image when players entered the Pause menu. This might seem negligible, but percentage margins aren’t really the point here. Instead, Xbox is using this example as a pilot case study to demonstrate the utility of its new bespoke energy and carbon tracker toolkit, which allow developers to directly measure the energy efficiency of their games in real-time.
Once studios begin to use these data monitoring tools en masse, the cumulative effect in energy-savings could be pretty impressive. It’s Boulicaut’s parting comment, however, that has left me wondering whether it’ll ever be enough, especially if other developers adopt the same approach to sustainable development as 343...
“Our main goal remains to reduce our carbon footprint without our players ever noticing the changes we’ve made.”
At first glance, this makes perfect sense. Compromising on game quality is something that developers always want to avoid, and justifiably so. But, if we’re being really honest, getting the games industry to net zero is never going to be achieved without its audiences noticing the difference. As Xbox acknowledges in its own blog, making a game more energy efficient involves tweaks to frame rate, resolution, latency, memory size and lots of other stuff that players are naturally going to pick up on.
If these tweaks result in games that perhaps aren’t quite as eye-wateringly sharp, smooth to the point of hyperreal, and content-heavy as they could be, is it so controversial to suggest that this would be an acceptable price to pay for the sake of the planet?
Responding to the climate crisis will involve compromise and concession across every aspect of our lives, including the ways we play. With that in mind, developers should feel enabled to exercise restraint in game design without having to worry about how their audiences might react to this philosophy later down the line.
In short, I’m okay with a Halo game that abstains from the endless climb towards more pixels, framerates, and textures, to instead offer a leaner, cleaner Master Chief simulator - one that’s fitting for the drawdown era. I’m hoping I’m not the only one.
Catching up with the March backlog
Since the prior edition of Play Anthropocene focused exclusively on our Lancer Tactics interview, there’s a couple of pieces of relevant news from that previous two week period that I finally wanted to shout out in a whistle-stop round-up here…
The Forest Cathedral launched on PC and console last month, presenting a dramatized parable of scientist Rachel Carson’s campaigning work against the use of DDT, an environmentally devastating agricultural pesticide, in the US during the 50’s and 60’s. Her seminal book, Silent Spring, resulted in DDT being banned across the country, and eventually led to the creation of the US’ Environmental Protection Agency. These victories didn’t come without hardship for Carson, however, who became the go-to target for sexist smear campaigns from the chemical companies profiting off of DDT. The Forest Cathedral rightly celebrates Carson’s life, passions, and courage, then, albeit through its own unique story in which she is depicted as a young researcher investigating the use of DDT on a mysterious, remote island. Check it out now!
Project Drawdown, a thinktank developing scientifically viable frameworks for decarbonisation, released a new report looking specifically at how the games industry can reign back its carbon emissions, and became a force for net positive in the climate fight. There’s lots of good stuff in there, including (to name just a few highlights) a call for games companies to become more active in lobbying governments on climate policy, some great case studies from Xbox, Rovio, and EA, plus a frank challenge to the industry about fossil fuel divestment (see Warm Up), and the need to invest its capital into more ethically operated funds.
Speaking of reports, The United Nations’ Playing for the Planet Alliance released its 2022 Annual Impact Report, looking back on where the initiative has seen the most promising progress in its coalition work thus far, while also identifying many of the challenges that remain. It’s well worth a read, especially the last section, which offers a handy visual table showing exactly where each Playing for the Planet member sits in terms of the ambitions of their climate commitments, and the work they’ve already done to reach them thus far.
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