MGC Research at GDC 2026: Tabletop Sustainability on the World Stage

At the 2026 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Green Games Guide board member Carol Mertz delivered a talk asking a pressing question: what responsibility do tabletop creators bear for the environmental impact of the games they make?

Her session, Creating a Culture of Sustainability in Tabletop Games, addressed designers, publishers, and manufacturers directly, arguing that the people who make board games hold practical power to reduce the industry's carbon footprint. Moving between concrete actions and more ambitious proposals for changing the norms of tabletop production and distribution, Mertz made the case that sustainability is not just a materials problem — it is a cultural one.

The talk grew out of work done for the Green Games Guide, a community-authored resource developed by publishers, designers, manufacturers, and players committed to making the tabletop industry more sustainable. Version 1.1 of the Guide, released just days before GDC, was informed by MGC's own Chloé Wake and Paul Wake, who sit on the GGG board alongside Mertz and lead Work Package 6 on the EU Horizon Europe-funded STRATEGIES project. The updated edition offers expanded guidance on materials — including textiles, metals, and glass — alongside new case studies of environmentally thoughtful design already emerging from within the industry.

MGC's involvement with the Green Games Guide goes back further still: in July 2025, we co-hosted a panel at UK Games Expo alongside independent studios and Asmodee to explore how the industry is grappling with the real dilemmas of greening board game production. Seeing that work reach the GDC stage is a marker of how seriously the industry is beginning to take these questions.

The full talk is available to GDC Vault members here. The Green Games Guide can be downloaded free at greengamesguide.com.