Save the environment with game writers!

Happy Earth Day!  You may think game writing has nothing to do with the environment, and you’d be right.  Undaunted, I will now analyze whether you save the environment more by hiring a game writer in house versus outsourcing a writer, say, in another city.  I will use http://www.carbonfootprint.com/ to discern how many tonnes — yes, tonnes — of CO2 emissions occur in each case.

Remote emissions

I recently took a round trip flight from Los Angeles to Austin for a kick-off meeting.  How much did this flight emit?

• .561 tonnes of CO2

The meeting got us all on the same page, and I went home and completed the writing assignment remotely.  How much did working remotely emit?

• .779 tonnes of CO2 for house annually
• 4.562 tonnes of CO2 for food, entertainment, etc. annually

However, chances are this CO2 would have been emitted no matter where I worked or lived! 

Onsite emissions

Now let’s pretend that instead of living in LA, I lived in Austin, worked on-site and commuted 10 miles to work every day in a car without taking the highway.  How much would that emit?

• 1.826 tonnes of CO2 for car annually

Looks like outsourcing a writer is a clear winner compared to having one drive to work every day.  Even if a writer worked on-site for half the year, it wouldn’t catch up to the emissions of one flight.

But when I worked on staff at a game company, I didn’t drive to work.  I took the bus or carpooled.  So what if your on-site writer took the bus instead of drove?  How much would that emit?

• .717 tonnes of CO2 annually 

Aha!  So if you hire a writer on-site for about two-thirds of a year or less, who also takes public transportation, you would thus be saving the environment! 

How’s your carbon footprint?

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