Games for better futures: using the X-curve to seed a more sustainable games industry

Video games are one of the most significant global media, with a large impact on material economies and on collective imaginations and culture. Here, we map out a transition to a new paradigm for the games industry to unlock its potential to contribute to more sustainable futures. To do this, we organized a series of seven workshops with game developers, funders, and researchers in the games industry using a combination of the “seeds of good Anthropocenes” and X-curve methods to develop a transition pathway that informs a new paradigm for the industry. We first developed seeds of potential change through a series of workshop formats (workshops 1–3). We then focused workshops on funding a new regime (workshop 4), and on breaking down the existing system (workshops 5 and 6). In the final workshop (7), we took all results of previous workshops and mapped them onto different connections between X-curve dynamics using an adapted version of the X-curve that emphasizes these connections. In this final synthesis workshop, which is our focus here, four main themes emerged as aspects of a new paradigm for the games industry: unionization of the games sector, new sources of funding, new ways to connect games and societal action or activism, and new norms and practices around game aesthetics. The introduction of the X-curve in the final workshop allowed for greater focus on unmaking current systems, difficult transition phases, and the later stages of the transition. We discuss the value of developing a pathway toward a new sustainability paradigm for a creative sector such as the games industry, making a case for a greater focus on cultural sectors as drivers of societal change.