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. Timed just days after the release of GGG version 1.1, the GDC appearance offered a great platform for the Guide’s expanded guidance on materials, which includes research on textiles, metals, and glass, alongside new case studies of environmentally thoughtful design already emerging from within the industry.
GDC follows our panel at UK Games Expo in July 2025, where we explored alongside independent studios and Asmodee how the industry is grappling with the real dilemmas of greening board game production. Seeing that conversation reach the GDC stage is a marker of how seriously the industry is beginning to take these questions.
The full talk is now available to GDC Vault members here. If you haven’t already, you can also download the latest edition of the Green Games Guide here.