A Renewable Artgames Residency: Exploring Sustainable Practices for Art Game Design

This paper describes the Renewable Artgames Residency (RAR), a prototype initiative exploring low-carbon and sustainability-focused practices for small-scale art, experimental, and indie game creation. Its central argument is that digital game making retains an appearance of environmental neutrality despite its real energy and material costs, and that smaller creators lack models and resources for reducing those costs. The initiative aimed to move beyond superficial "greenwashing" toward practical, practice-tested alternatives, considering the full ecology of game making, including hardware, computing energy, development routines, distribution, play, and the physical and emotional toll of the creative process.

The residency was shaped by a preliminary consultation process that helped define its parameters and evaluation metrics. Its first iteration, held in summer 2023, was a remote, synchronous, solo residency spanning several locations across Canada. Three self-directed artists, two internal and one external, worked using solar power stations, connected through asynchronous sharing of reflective practice and daily online or telephone check-ins. The residency's goals were to investigate slower, more reflective game design as an alternative to the rapid iteration, crunch, and game jam norms common in the industry, to articulate values-led sustainable practice for art games, and to provide space for more environmentally considerate digital use and creation.

The authors position the residency as both a trial and a model, offering a practical template for sustainable creation and seeding a community of practice around mindful game making. The paper's focus is experiential and practical, reporting outcomes from the residency synthesized into a zine that reflects on its process. The work is framed against a growing but still limited body of research on digital games and climate, most of which concentrates on commercial studio practices, underscoring the relevance of an initiative aimed at independent and art creators.