Sustainability in Games

Hi folks,

I've just put up a new page on my site listing information about companies trying to make more sustainable games, certifications, and products with green credentials. I plan to update the page regularly and would love to hear any suggestions you might have that can be added to the page.

Sustainability page

Iain

Do any of those companies have games made in China then shipped around the world?

I think it's a good initiative from an awareness perspective but I really think that the focus on personal consumption/recycling is not the right approach to the problem. Everyone registered on BGG could go on and live carbon neutral lives from 2022 onward and it wouldn't make much difference to climate change.

The solutions we need are a combination of technological and political - this effort succeeds in raising awareness and so works to advance the political area but it also feels a bit like preaching to the choir. Unless you can convince a mass of voters to be materially poorer (in the short term) or to invest massively in new technologies then it's all a bit moot. To Christopher's point, a tax on plastic tat from overseas would hurt Amazon.com/Walmart/American business, China/overseas manufacturing and may actually do something for climate change. That seems to do enough damage spread across enough politically unpopular groups to get folks of all political stripes on board... but from a board gamer's perspective you'd be effectively asking the MSRP to rise by a significant amount.

I'm not sure I have a succinct point but I guess it'd be that focusing on manufacturing and distribution (like Postmark Games) is more effective than materials and recycling but even that change would be a drop in the ocean to the changes needed societally.

Eat Poop You Cat is the gold standard for sustainable games.

I support this 100% but there are two realities that no one wants to talk about:

1) the only thing that really matters is reducing -production- of cheaply made board games and that means NOT BUYING MORE. The demand for more more more needs to be cut off at the ankles. This means shutting down the flow of Kickstarter shit and getting responsible publishers to focus on more contained, sustainable, and sensibly produced titles that may cost more but provide the consumer with more lasting value. But that also requires the entire hobby to change back from this disgusting “gotta buy em all” mentality. And ending the notion that every design is a product line launch.

2) as long as the hobby is still chiefly dominated by middle class/middle aged white men, nothing will ever change. They largely as a demographic don’t give a shit about anything other than spending money for immediate gratification.

I was reading somewhere that the idea of personal responsibility for sustainability was created by corporations to shift the public conversation of who is to blame and who should be doing things about it, to avoid having to do anything.

That being said, I will just naturally choose to buy more sustainable products over less sustainable when available, because I don’t want to poop where I eat and I want a positive future for my descendants.

I agree with you all 100% as to this is a drop in the ocean but I wanted to try and gather some information together for our audience to make more informed choices. I hate that our governments are so impotent when it comes to the climate crisis.

Part of me doing this is wanting to try and start a wider conversation in the hobby about how we consume games, and the considerations in manufacturing.

I do like Michaels point about consuming less, I'll maybe put that in as a "What can I do?" kind of thing. I'll add something about that in.

n815e wrote: I was reading somewhere that the idea of personal responsibility for sustainability was created by corporations to shift the public conversation of who is to blame and who should be doing things about it, to avoid having to do anything.

A few years back, there was a specific version of this floating around on social media and proclaiming that most of climate change was caused by 100 big corporations. Exactly 100, just because. And the reason why that's wrong is that these big corporations, like Amazon and BP, all rely on doing business with hundreds of millions of normal people like us. They might be pocketing the profits, but we're the ones driving climate change.

Shellhead wrote:

n815e wrote: I was reading somewhere that the idea of personal responsibility for sustainability was created by corporations to shift the public conversation of who is to blame and who should be doing things about it, to avoid having to do anything.

A few years back, there was a specific version of this floating around on social media and proclaiming that most of climate change was caused by 100 big corporations. Exactly 100, just because. And the reason why that's wrong is that these big corporations, like Amazon and BP, all rely on doing business with hundreds of millions of normal people like us. They might be pocketing the profits, but we're the ones driving climate change.

Here’s the thing. Consumers are ill informed and purposefully so. Plastics manufacturers literally push this idea that we should be recycling, but they hide that they make products that have low recyclability and they also don’t purchase used plastic to make things, because it is cheaper for them to create new. They have no incentives to change because consumers have been duped and manipulated by them and lawmakers are bought by them.

They don’t invest in alternatives because they are not required to. They don’t invest in the recycling programs they push through third party programs that they fund because they aren’t required to.

This same thing goes for fossil fuels and factory farms…

Industries can mostly be counted on to pursue profit and that means literally destroying the livable planet to do so, or poisoning people or creating deadly products. The only check on these is education and a government that is driven to force them to change.

Companies do react to consumer demand. But they actually drive it way more than react to it, they influence your governments to resist forcing change and they subvert information that would make you want them to change.

Naturally, the discussion here centers on manufacturing and the games themselves. Has anybody looked specifically into how much blame the packaging / shipping end deserves?

I ask because I placed an order with Petersen Games recently for some Cthulhu Wars odds and ends, and even though everything in my order (except Dire Azathoth) would have fit in a single faction box, it arrived in a box big enough to hold four Twilight Imperiums. This is mostly because PG's has a billion different SKU's and they're all packed in individual boxes, and while I'm grateful that nothing was damaged during shipping, the whole thing feels... wasteful. I'll have to get a picture at some point. I wonder if this sort of thing is common?

2) as long as the hobby is still chiefly dominated by middle class/middle aged white men, nothing will ever change. They largely as a demographic don’t give a shit about anything other than spending money for immediate gratification.

Oh, I wouldn’t set your target so small. Most people regardless of gender, race and age purchase largely useless things on a whim. It used to be a western thing, but the east has caught up. I guarantee you I’ve purchased less than 10% of the contents of my house. Most of us middle aged white males are more than happy to wear the same cargo pants we owned in 1996.

The fairer point is this — don’t purchase everything. It’s not making you happy. Purchase value. Purchase used. Purchase with forethought. Figure out what it is that will make you happy and focus your spending (and time) on that. The rest is just baggage.

Frankly, I think this effort would be better spent awarding consumers instead of publishers. Publishers will produce what people want, even when they don’t know they want it. This tag will become just one more feature of the overall package, another thing for publishers to foist onto us. Press consumers to make a list of everything they purchase each year and how they purchased it. Most would be embarrassed to read it this time of year.

This is so stupid that this is a sustainability consideration, but you might need a category for “does this project use a proof-of-work blockchain?” category.

HABA, and german companies in general I think, lead the way here. Wood parts made from sustainable forests, dyed with non-toxic chemicals, minimal waste packaging, and I think even the sawdust left over is used to heat the plant.

It can be done, but we just got to stop shipping stuff all over the world and buying disposable crap made of plastic by near slaves in horrible conditions.

Based on a lifetime of observing human nature, I predict that our response to climate change will be too little and too late. Too many people prioritize immediate gratification over solutions to long-term problems.

Based on my three plays of Bios: Megafauna, climate change will kill us all quickly and unexpectedly unless we learn to swim.