Cloud Gaming Atlas
Gaming infrastructures and their environmental entanglements
 Image: Flues of data centers punctuating the skyline in a rural district of Brandenburg. Data centres are specialized facilities designed to store, process, and transfer vast amounts of information. They serve as the backbone of distributed computing, enabling a wide range of activities: from supporting scientific research and industrial operations to delivering content for social media, gaming, and video streaming; from powering artificial intelligence by training and running machine learning models to facilitating financial transactions and managing critical services for governments and businesses. Although we associate data centres with high-end computing, they serve a wide range of purposes--from cutting-edge science to the most mundane applications. For example, a computing centre in Nuremberg prints approximately 40 tonnes of paper each day, corresponding to tax data provided—and transfered via the internet--by tax consultants in Germany. As societies become increasingly data-driven, data centres have emerged as critical infrastructure, ensuring the continuous flow of information, 24/7. A typical data centre looks somewhat like this:  However important they may be for present-day societies, data centre operations come with significant environmental challenges. Running thousands of computing centres simultaneously worldwide requires vast amounts of energy, as well as extensive land and water resources—often in a scale that is difficult to quantify. Estimates are that a large-scale data centre can require anything from 200 to 400 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, while cooling methods may demand up to 1.1–1.9 billion litres of water per year, equivalent to a small city. The fictional, AI-generated image of a data centre below (the flying, giant cameras were not in the prompt) was processed within a data centre, and its creation alone is estimated to have emitted approximately 2.2 grams of carbon dioxide—the equivalent to fully charging a smartphone. This estimate excludes the emissions produced during the training of the models.  However, the generation of a single image cannot reasonably represent the scale of data centre operations or their growth trajectory. According to Data Centre Map (DCM), a website that tracks data centre services, Germany had 170 commercial data centres across 31 cities in 2014. Today, that number has grown to 403 operational data centres spread across 57 cities. Similarly, Switzerland had 59 data centres in 16 cities a decade ago, compared to 109 facilities in 24 locations today. In 2023, Europe experienced the largest increase in new cloud regions globally, with eight new zones dedicated to hyperscale data centres. Despite this expansion, Europe remains far behind the world’s largest data centre market—the United States—which has 3,390 commercial data centres listed on DCM. However, it is important to note that these figures do not fully capture the scale of the global data centre industry. Most big tech companies do not have all their data centres listed on DCM, and many countries lack transparent data on the number of facilities within their borders, making the obtaining of comprehensive assessments very difficult.  Image: Cooling towers on top of a data centre. As the demand for geo-distributed data processing continues to grow, with digital technologies assuming an almost species-like role in today's anthroposphere, addressing the environmental pressures associated to this growth is crucial. And it is not just a matter of "environmental impact": one of the trickiest problems of understanding the environmental entanglements of data centres may be in fact a matter of aesthetics. As they function as an infrastructure of digitised societies, with a growing number of both human and non-human users, these facilities remain largely opaque in everyday experience. Even if estimates are that 85% of all the data exchanged over the internet by organisations or businesses is based on cloud computing, most people are unaware of this infrastructure, as the very concept of the “cloud” creates the illusion of computing as something intangible and environmentally friendly. In addition, data centres are often located at exurban perimeters, nearby regional airports or remote train stations (and sometimes even within them), so they tend to go unnoticed. Plus, when discussions of anthropogenic climate change arise in public discourse, the environmental pressures associated with digital technologies are rarely highlighted.  Image: Airplane flying over a data centre located next to an airport. Since intensive, 24/7 computing generates a lot of heat, air conditioners and generators are necessary to keep server halls constantly refrigerated and computer processing stable. Due to this, data centres have been said to function as thermo-cultural mediators, managing thermal interactions between culture and nature, computer halls and external environments. Considering this context, how can we make sense of the thermal mediations of planetary-scale computing infrastructures? How can we explore these relationships as an aesthetic experience? One suggestion may actually be to tune our senses to the materialities of digital technology. Researchers and artists have been doing this in several ways: some have been cartographing the life cycles of hardware parts, others have been aestheticising the images of server halls and the cooling infrastructures of data centres, or the water pipes that conduct fresh water from riverbeds to their interiors. Another idea, perhaps less explored, is to give the data centres a listen!
Image: Different air-conditioning systems for data centres, shown from aerial and lateral angles. While data centres typically appear nestled in industrial districts and logistical hubs, their visual opaqueness is contradicted by the loud humming that can often be heard—sometimes near the facility, sometimes a few kilometers away. These sounds serve as acoustic performances of the operational rhythms of the cloud as a socio-technical infrastructure. The humming becomes more prominent when artificial cooling is in use—mostly during summertime (data centre ecosystems may be artificial, but they also have a seasonality). Ultimately, the noises coming from these hermetical grey boxes represent not just the workings of a single facility, but the larger metabolism of heat dissipation involved in cloud operations, when data from geographically distant areas is processed and transferred continuously. ATTUNING TO THE HEAT DISSIPATION OF COMPUTINGIn order to make this infrastructure more relatable, we can make use of an often-neglected sense in our aesthetic experience of digital technology: listening. This is for a very simple reason. Servers and pipes may hide behind the solid walls and brutalist concrete and iron architecture of data centres, unseen, but they still generate a great deal of noise: continuous, sometimes strange sounds, hums and whistles of various tones, etc.
* The recordings available at the link are free to use for prototyping and experimenting with the project, but they remain provisional, for the sake of illustration. A new round of data collection will take place in the coming months, after which longer and higher-quality soundscape recordings will be provided for the project. This is the sound of large-scale data centres. Well... of just a few of them. Most of these sounds were recorded in the vicinities of data centre campuses in Hesse, Brandenburg or Zurich, but there is a wider aural diversity to consider. The sounds emanating from the facilities are already distinct from one another, but they also blend with the vibrant expressions of their surroundings: cars on exurban highways, construction sites with workers, remote rural landscapes, flocks of birds near riverbeds, and logistical districts. They form a fusion of nature and the 'second nature' of built environments—they are technoscapes. How can one experience a virtual sonic journey in this context, where the sounds (and, therefore, the heat dissipation) of escalating data centre landscapes merge with the everyday acoustics of urban, rural, or industrial environments? The VR experiment can speculate with these technoscapes in several ways. Here are a few non-exhaustive suggestions: 1. Experiment creating a blind-friendly tour through a single street with different data centres, using the spatial affordances of audio: sounds may guide us geographically, through the direction of the emitting source, but can also confuse us, with echoes, ground noises, and other dynamic spatial effects. Keep in mind that ultra-high and low pitch sounds can evoke strong, bodily sensations. 2. Try imagining a virtual exploration of data centre audioscapes, but try to experiment with them in wider spatial settings. The focus would preferably be on the affective, sonic experience, so realism is not the goal here, and you may feel free to use geometric forms instead of realistic images if you would like to provide some visuals, for instance. You may also consider looping the sounds and mixing them with the soundscapes of other environments. Sound libraries and audio databases can be used creatively for this end as well. 3. Alternatively, you may instead produce a piece of speculative fiction: imagine the point at which the energy demands of growing, large-scale computing systems exceed even the extraordinary modern energy-efficiency measures of today, and cities can no longer accommodate further cloud infrastructure growth, given the already saturated computer-processing environment. What would the sonic experience of such a data centre-dense city feel like? How to tell a sonic fictional story of this environment in a VR experience? All images and soundscapes on this landing page by Bibiana da Silva de Paula and Eduardo Luersen.
The image and audio files are shared for the purpose of developing the joint project between Merz Akademie Stuttgart and the Zukunftskolleg.
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 Outer space has been recurrently represented in computer games. This phenomenon can, in part, be attributed to the immersive and simulation-oriented nature inherent to the digital gaming medium. Computer simulation provides designers with a vast and flexible canvas upon which they can meticulously craft highly imaginative topographies and scenarios, and one could propose that the coupling of digital games and space science fiction is a perfect match for developing speculative aesthetics. Nonetheless, the relentless repetition of warfare and space colonisation themes in digital games can sometimes make the wondrous imaginings about outer space look pretty dull, repeating warmongering ideas thoroughly repeated in the surface of the planet.
Some developers apparently understood this difference, and seem to explore the elements that connect space exploration and human curiosity in particular. This is the case of Mobius Digital's game Outer Wilds. As a creative game about exoplanet exploration, Outer Wilds promotes some significant but often neglected aspects of space travel in contemporary sci-fi, from the cosmopolitical dimension necessary to produce open knowledge about the universe to the scientific methods developed to assemble images of unknown spaces thousand light-years away. In Outer Wilds the cosmos is not primarily a space for overstating civilisational clashes or highlighting geopolitical intrigue. Instead, players are lured to explore the surrounding planetary marbles while waiting for a supernova that will successively destroy and reconstruct the universe at each interval of 22 minutes. In an article published in the most recent issue of Games and Culture, Julieth Paula and I discuss these and other aspects of the outer space-themed game, while retrieving the media imagery of space exploration and the effects of observational astronomy over media philosophy under Peter Szendy's notion of philosofiction. ps.: The article has also some nice-looking screenshots from the game as well.  In late November, the event Telling the Future: Re-Imagining the Technosphere, featuring Prof. Dr. Birgit Schneider (Institute for Arts and Media, University of Potsdam), took place. We gathered an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group at the Bischofsvilla in Konstanz, bringing together researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds: Chemistry, Literature, Sociology, Biology, Political Science, Computer Science, Art History, and Media Studies.
The event explored images of the future that circulate widely in both scientific and popular imaginaries, including AI-generated images, while also seeking to probe other, more speculative visualisations. Starting with traditional and often teleological images that present utopian, eschatological, or nostalgic visions of the relationship between technology and nature, the group aimed to inquire into these historical depictions, navigating the spaces between them to envision more ambiguous, diverse, or even contradictory alternatives. Within these nuances, aesthetic exploration enables a critique of the existing imagery while also probing images that can introduce contrast and dissonance to the two prevailing narratives: technological solutionism, on the one hand, and the return to an idealised pristine, untouched nature, on the other. Following an impulse talk by Birgit Schneider, participants were provided with a diverse and extensive collection of printed images. Organising these images by elective affinities, participants formed groups to discuss, interpret, and create visual maps from their constellations of images. In a World Café format, each group presented a brief critical interpretation of their image sets, debating, among other questions, what role technology may play in shaping the future through tentative re-entanglements of the organic and the inorganic. The event was part of a series of collaborations between Prof. Schneider and me, which started in Winter 2023 in Potsdam. These initiatives have been supported by the Zukunftskolleg and the Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung (ZKF) at the University of Konstanz. The workshop was followed by the public lecture Climate Images, Climate Cultures: Studying Aesthetics of Meteorology in Art and Science, delivered by Prof. Schneider as part of the ZKF’s New Directions in Cultural Inquiry series.  A new paper on the Cloud Gaming Atlas project was just published in the timely anthology Money | Games | Economies, issued by the University of Krems Press. The chapter explores the environmental pressures associated with gaming services through a focus on the infrastructures underpinning cloud gaming. We analyse sustainability strategies adopted by key yet often overlooked infrastructure providers essential to the current gaming ecosystem, unravelling how the industry's focus on energy efficiency and carbon offsetting measures is deeply intertwined not only with environmental, but also financial metabolisms–some of which are self-defeating to sustainable aims. This outcome, which contrasts with the increasing involvement of developers in green gaming initiatives and calls into question common expectations around digitalisation, prompts us to critically reevaluate the discourse on sustainability within the games industry. In light of the prevalent gaming-as-a-service model and the highly opaque infrastructures that support it, we modestly propose that researchers and environmental organisations reframe their approaches to how gaming practices intertwine with pressing environmental issues.
If you're interested, the full piece is available Open Access: After the Stack Opaque : Cloud Gaming Infrastructure and Environmental Outsourcing Metabolisms The most recent issue of the Unisinos journal Fronteiras: Estudos Midiáticos has been published. I guest edited this special issue on Digital Culture with colleagues Ronaldo Henn and Christian Gonzatti, both from Unisinos University. I would like to thank all the authors and peer reviewers who contributed to this issue. The fully Open Access issue can be read here (mostly in Portuguese): Dossiê Cultura Digital, Fronteiras: Estudos Midiáticos   Lovely to hear different (and humid) perspectives from the Blue Humanities at the University of Konstanz, during the Transoceanic Imaginations conference this week. I was happy for the opportunity to contribute with an experimental media-historical piece on submarine cable projects and the visual and textual stories around the development, repair, and breakdown of transcontinental telecommunication infrastructures.
As widely publicised in recent years, a significant portion of the infrastructure supporting the Internet is submerged in the ocean depths. In order to transmit information efficiently and reliably, the global system of interconnected computer networks depends upon a vast submarine network of fibre-optic cables that carry more than 95% of all international data traffic. My paper analysed a specific case of contemporary transoceanic cabling, interrogating the imageries present in official and public relations communications regarding the planning and implementation of the newly installed EllaLink undersea internet cable linking Europe and Latin America. Planned since 2015 as part of the BELLA infrastructure initiative, this transatlantic connection, spanning 6,000 km between Fortaleza (Brazil) and Sines (Portugal), started operating in 2021. The PR campaigns surrounding the implementation of this connection fairly emphasised the development of advanced IT services and the provision of a low-latency signal route for European and South American companies, services, and users. An analysis that intends to go beyond the surface, however, can show how transoceanic contact is reimagined as geoengineered swift undersea data and energy routes, organising the oceanic space infrastructurally as a medium for connective or otherwise disruptive information traffic. This vision provides rich materials to theorise on the decentralised control structure that governs communication and interactions among transcontinental network systems. (Plus, it provides a good opportunity to share the photograph I made this summer of a small cable crossing the Seerhein.)  Next month I will moderate the ZKF Public Talk "Climate Images, Climate Cultures: Studying Aesthetics of Meteorology in Art and Science", which will be given by Prof. Dr. Birgit Schneider (University of Potsdam).
Drawing on Amitav Ghosh’s insight that "the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus a crisis of the imagination," the lecture will explore the cultural dimensions of anthropogenic environmental change. While science provides a rational understanding of global warming, the talk will examine how the arts can foster different ways of perceiving the climate crisis—ways that engage also emotions and symbolic understanding. The talk will also reflect on the role of the Humanities, posing critical questions on the intersections of aesthetics, culture, and climate action. Here is a link with more details about the event: Climate Images If you're interested, see also the workshop "Telling the Future: Re-Imagining the Technosphere" that I am organising in the afternoon: Telling the Future These timely events, and the opportunity of having Prof. Schneider sharing her research with the interdisciplinary academic community in Konstanz, is made possible due to the support from the Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung (ZKF) and the Zukunftskolleg.  Are massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds potential havens for activities that require a national security response? This question has been raised by various secret services over the past decade. Although the systematic exploration and exploitation of virtual worlds by intelligence and security agencies have received some journalistic attention, academia has addressed the porous issues of secrecy and surveillance in these spaces, in particular digital games, much more rarely. Similar to telephones and other previous communication means, virtual worlds and online games allow for the monitoring and tracing of conversations and transactions, while digital media facilitates the discrete logging of these activities. However, beyond this mediation, certain agencies are concerned that virtual worlds "may be a potent means of spreading values and ideologies" that threaten public security, as surmised in a government-sponsored study on intelligence gathering in virtual environments.
But are these fears about online games justified? Is espionage still a big thing, or just a side-effect of Cold War-inspired rhetorics weaponised by nationalist attitudes? Once the national security data-mining infrastructure extended to the realms of avatars, trolls and goblins, how did that impact the design, publication, play, and critical reception of video games? Based on these questions at the intersection of computer games, political geography, and digital media infrastructure, I am organising the public talk “Troll Security - Espionage in Virtual Worlds”, which will be given by Prof. Dr. Peter Krapp (University of California Irvine), on 24 June, at the Zukunftskolleg. The talk will be followed by a post-talk reception at the GameLab at the University of Konstanz.  Later this month, I will co-host the workshop 'Digital Games through Muddled Pasts and Modded History' with my dear colleague James Wilson (Medieval History/Islamic Studies) at the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.
Over April 24 and 25, we're exploring history-themed digital games, thinking of the particular ways they shape visions about the past. Within this scope, we’re interested not only in how history gets represented in games and what that means for the gaming worlds, but also in how games about history come to life in practice–how devs, storytellers, and history advisors collaborate and negotiate the decisions and production aspects that will entail in the final form of such worlds. We'll have some special guests who participated in the development of the last game in the Assassin's Creed franchise. AC Mirage takes us back to 9th-century Baghdad and approaches big and controversial topics like the 'Islamic Golden Age' and the Zanj slave rebellion. We also gathered a special list of researchers who have been exploring questions on the epistemological and praxiological relationships between games and history, all set to engage in some good and in-depth discussion. The full programme is available here: Workshop Digital games through muddled pasts and modded history  We will start 2024 with a workshop at the University of Potsdam. In 11.01.24 we will put up the event at the Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM), as part of my research visit at the chair for Knowledge Cultures and Media Environments.
The workshop proposes an open discussion on the relationship between cloud infrastructures and environmental issues, in light of emerging cloud gaming services and other computer-intensive media platforms. The imageries surrounding digitalisation have been largely associated with ideas of green growth, energy transition, and resource efficiency, while at the same being conceptualised within a post-industrial epistemological framework that envisioned digital media as cold, ephemeral, or weightless. However, by analysing reports from monitoring organisations, as well as the very physical structures that make platform services possible, one can trace some of the frictions in the environmental imagination at the heart of ambient supercomputing. The scale of these technical systems also poses challenges to perception and visualisation: it is not only that the sheer volume of data they carry is difficult to conceive. With the outsourcing of computer processing and storage to geo-distributed facilities, planetary-scale cloud infrastructures convey the prospect of ubiquitous telematics yet opaque industrialisation, showing and concealing at once. After an impulse talk on the topic, we would like to jointly discuss the interplay between these infrastructures and environments, as privileged spaces to observe the merging of the inorganic with the organic in telematic technical systems. Anyone interested in joining us can register by sending an email to [email protected]. |
AuthorThis blog is meant to provide a space for discussing the geophysical as well as the the imaginary entanglements between media infrastructures and organic environments. In the coming months, it will be dedicated to my current project, Cloud Gaming Atlas, which is particularly interested in observing and interrogating the infrastructures developed for cloud gaming initiatives in regard to their environmental implications. Additionally, it should also gather information about events and publications related to my project at the Zukunftskolleg and the Department of Literature, Art and Media of the University of Konstanz. Archives
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