Edge July 2021

how can gaming get greener?

The climate crisis will affect all areas of our lives, whether that’s in the form of the changes we make to mitigate its worst effects, or in the consequences we’ll face for a lack of action. The way it impacts on our experience of videogames, and how it will reshape the industry, is one small part of that picture. The Green Games Guide, a resource produced by UK videogame trade body UKIE in collaboration with Games London and Playing For The Planet, is part of a nascent attempt to help the UK videogame industry do its part. The guide doesn’t pull any punches when laying out the threat that climate change poses and the scale of the challenge we face in addressing it. However, in an era when even fossil-fuel…

out of a jam

The Playing For The Planet Alliance, one of the organisations behind the Green Games Guide, is a partnership of more than 30 game companies that have made commitment to take climate action. Sam Barratt, chief of youth, education and advocacy for the UN Environment Programme, which facilitates the Alliance, tells us where it plans to go next. “This year we’re looking to build the Alliance out in China as well as reaching a collective monthly active userbase of one billion through this year’s Green Game Jam. Last year’s jam led to the planting of thousands of trees, raised funds for wildlife conservation, and secured commitments from players to change the way they light their homes. Currently, members are working on new decarbonisation tools that we aim to roll out industry-wide,…

active duty

While you will sit in the chair as Ghosts’ producer, your role is set to be more than that of a passive observer. Each of the five presenters wears a heart-rate monitor that will warn you of impending danger, giving you the chance to call them to the safety of a Big Brother-style diary room – or, to look at it another way, it can alert you to a potential money shot. Audience figures provide a fail state almost as grave as letting your presenters die, and the challenge will lie in balancing the two. “You’ve got to keep them alive. Look out for the Long Lady. Keep the show afloat,” Shepherd says. And then there’s the matter of the strange noises in the van around you……

broadcast media

Hideo Kojima’s Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand and Ghostwatch, the cult ‘90s BBC faux documentary, are two things not often mentioned in the same breath. But they’re among the reference points raised during our conversation with Jed Shepherd, the filmmaker taking his first step into videogames with Ghosts. And if these inspirations seem an unlikely crossover, then the Venn diagram required to fully encompass Ghosts’ conceit – a “realtime live-action horror videogame” involving the makers of both Siren Head and Big Bird – is outright inconceivable. Shepherd is certainly no stranger to high-concept horror. He was the co-writer of Host, a 2020 found-footage movie about a séance which played out entirely within a Zoom window. He’s reuniting with the core of that film’s cast for this project, where they’ll…

public airing

Perhaps the most striking thing about Ghosts is that it can only be played once a day, at 10pm local time. This limit can, of course, be circumvented, using external means that will be familiar to Animal Crossing time travellers, or using an in-game setting hidden behind a puzzle. What’s important, though, is what it signifies for players. Shepherd invokes the concept of “event television”, mentioning the buzz Lost garnered in its day. “That sharing of information made the show richer,” he says. “I want that. If you fail, then tomorrow you’ll be able to do it again, but with more information you can research throughout the day.”…

reinventing africa

The topic of wildlife preservation aside, We Are The Caretakers rejects the stereotypes of African countries and cultures often found in western-made games. Art director Anthony Jones is a veteran of Blizzard, whose games often lean heavily on caricatures of ‘primitive’ races (the studio has, admittedly, attempted to address this heritage with 2016’s Overwatch, whose Africa-set Numbani map is a utopic labyrinth of gleaming skyscrapers). Like Marvel’s Black Panther movie, Jones’ Afrofuturist designs mix complex machinery with indigenous motifs, architecture and dress, not just rebutting the association between African culture and ‘primitiveness’, but challenging western conceptions of what ‘cutting-edge’ technology is and what role it plays in daily life.…