The total energy cost of computing activities is steadily increasing and projections indicate that it will be one of the dominant global energy consumers in the coming decades. However, perhaps due to its relative youth, the video game sector has not yet developed the same level of environmental awareness as other computing technologies despite the estimated three billion regular video game players in the world. This work evaluates the energy consumption of the most widely used industry-scale video game engines: Unity and Unreal Engine. Specifically, our work uses three scenarios representing relevant aspects of video games (Physics, Statics Meshes, and Dynamic Meshes) to compare the energy consumption of the engines. The aim is to determine the influence of using each of the two engines on energy consumption. Our research has confirmed significant differences in the energy consumption of video game engines: 351% in Physics in favor of Unity, 17% in Statics Meshes in favor of Unity, and 26% in Dynamic Meshes in favor of Unreal Engine. These results represent an opportunity for worldwide potential savings of at least 51 TWh per year, equivalent to the annual consumption of nearly 13 million European households, that might encourage a new branch of research on energy-efficient video game engines.

翻译：计算活动的总能耗稳步增长，预计将在未来数十年成为全球主要的能源消耗来源之一。然而，尽管全球约有30亿常规视频游戏玩家，但或许因其相对年轻的发展历程，该行业尚未形成与其他计算技术同等水平的环境意识。本研究评估了业界最广泛使用的游戏引擎——Unity和Unreal Engine的能耗表现。具体而言，我们通过三个代表视频游戏关键方面的场景（物理模拟、静态网格体和动态网格体）来比较两种引擎的能耗差异，旨在探究使用不同引擎对能耗的影响。研究证实，视频游戏引擎之间存在显著的能耗差异：在物理场景中，Unity能耗优势达351%；静态网格体场景中，Unity优势为17%；动态网格体场景中，Unreal Engine优势为26%。这些结果表明，全球每年可至少节省51太瓦时（TWh）的潜在能耗，相当于近1300万欧洲家庭的年用电量，有望推动节能视频游戏引擎这一新兴研究方向的发展。