Enjoyable Things You Should Now Feel Guilty About

3.) Video Games

On this one, I’m not going to make the typical arguments, i.e. pontificating on tired notions of imitating violence and wasted time and money. Instead, I bring to the table a far more relevant and immediate topic: pollution.

The carbon footprint of video games left by computers, televisions, and consoles is, to say the least, astonishing. While the green numbers for such online behemoths as World of Warcraft have been conspicuously kept out of the public eye, savvy analysts like Nicholas Carr have looked into another example for answers, namely the largest and most popular free online MMO to date: Second Life.

According to an article by Carr, there are about 12,500 active avatars on average logged on Second Life at any given point of the day. The 4,000 data servers and cooling systems used to support the world, combined with the 12,500 PCs that are used to control the avatars, amounts to 1,752 kWh of electricity used by each avatar over the course of one year.

“The average citizen of Brazil consumes 1,884 kWh,” writes Carr, “which, given the fact that my avatar estimate was rough and conservative, means that your average Second Life avatar consumes about as much electricity as your average Brazilian.”

That is a s#!tload of pollutants to put into the air just so you can fly around and buy a virtual house and a new cyber-dong in what amounts to little more than a celebrated three-dimensional chatroom. To put things in perspective, to produce that much CO2 with an SUV, you would have to drive over 2,300 miles, roughly the distance from New York to Las Vegas.

Keep in mind these figures are from 2006, too. Now, Second Life alone has around 13 million registered accounts and an average of 38,000 users logged in at any one moment. So, take those numbers and triple them.

Now, add to that list:

• World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 10 million subscribers.
• Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users.
• RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users.
• Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users.
• Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users.
• Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users.
• Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users.
• Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users.
• Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers.

And that is just for the online games. Jesus Christ, people! We are literally exchanging our living planet for a virtual one. Every time you play GTA4, you are driving three new species into extinction

Well, that’s all the time we have for this week’s installment of Enjoyable Things You Should Feel Guilty About. See you next week!

Like what you see?  You can email Aaron at awaltke@nationallampoon.com