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：计算活动的总能耗正稳步增长，预测表明其将在未来数十年内成为全球主要能耗领域之一。然而，尽管全球约有三十亿常规电子游戏玩家，或许由于该领域相对年轻，电子游戏行业尚未形成与其他计算技术相当的环境意识。本研究评估了业界最广泛使用的两大游戏引擎——Unity与虚幻引擎的能耗表现。具体而言，我们通过三个代表游戏关键特性的场景（物理模拟、静态网格与动态网格）对两款引擎的能耗进行对比分析，旨在探究不同引擎选择对能耗的影响。研究证实了游戏引擎间存在显著的能耗差异：物理模拟场景中Unity能耗低351%，静态网格场景中Unity能耗低17%，而动态网格场景中虚幻引擎能耗低26%。这些差异意味着全球每年至少存在51太瓦时的节能潜力，相当于近1300万欧洲家庭的年用电量。此发现有望推动能效优化游戏引擎这一新兴研究领域的发展。