Ready Player Green – A case study of sustainability in the Swedish games industry

The video games industry is taking more sustainability responsibilities since video games can reach a broad and tremendous audience. Apart from adopting sustainable business strategies, games companies also need to navigate various stakeholders’ expectations and draft strategies to communicate with them. However, despite an abundance of corporate social responsibility literature, there is no existing research specifically focusing on how the video games industry can contribute to this topic. The social and environmental responsibilities of games companies are usually discussed separately. Therefore, this project aims to explain, in the video games industry, how social and environmental impacts are addressed in the form of corporate social responsibility and how companies meet stakeholders’ needs as a part of their sustainable business strategies. Six companies in the Swedish games industry were selected and interviewed. Together with the published sustainability reports, a theory-based content analysis was applied. The results indicate that games companies have mature strategies to tackle social impacts. For environmental impacts, on the contrary, there are no united strategies. The measures used to address environmental impacts vary from corporate to corporate due to the significant differences in business models. Besides publishing documents to communicate with stakeholders, games companies can also communicate sustainability via their games, which can be done by integrating sustainability in game mechanics or as an add-on feature. In conclusion, achieving a competitive advantage is the ultimate goal in engaging corporate social responsibility. Also, stakeholders’ expectations push companies to be more sustainable. Communicating sustainability via games may raise environmental awareness among the players; however, it might only apply to a specific group of people.

Video game is a product that reaches millions of players worldwide. Therefore, it comes with responsibilities for the developers to ensure that the products do not result in negative impacts. Apart from social impacts, such as gender inequality and toxic player communities, there is also a rising environmental awareness among the games companies lately. However, existing research mainly discusses games companies’ social and environmental responsibilities separately. This project aims to explore how games companies address social and environmental issues in sustainability and how they communicate their sustainability efforts to their stakeholders. Six companies in the Swedish games industry were selected and interviewed. Together with the published sustainability reports, a theory-based content analysis was applied. The results show that games companies have a well-developed strategy to tackle social issues. In contrast, the measures to environmental issues vary due to differences in business models and their roles in the value chain. Games companies communicate their sustainability in two forms – through documentation and in-game features. To conclude, the main goal for companies to engage in sustainability is primarily to increase competitive advantage, and stakeholders’ expectations drive their sustainability engagement. Communicating sustainability via games may raise environmental awareness among the players; however, it might only apply to a specific group of people.