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Playing video games is not usually an outdoor activity, but gaming and nature do not have to be compartmentalized. Some of the games are filled with beautiful scenes of nature, like the blue flax flowers in the fantasy game Guild Wars 2 which were inspired by real-life plants, reported Mashable.
This connection between the video games and nature inspired Hannah Young and Aleks Atanasovski, two gamers who worked in advertising to come up with a way to allow game enthusiasts to grow the plants they loved in their favorite games.
The result was an official collaboration between Guild Wars and SeedSaga. “It's [the partnership]harnessing the gamer's love of getting merch from their favorite game, and having the opportunity to grow and nurture something like they would in the game, but being able to grow plants in the real world," Young told Mashable.
Introducing SeedSaga
SeedSaga is a botanical pilot , the first of its kind, that allows the players of Guild Wars to apply for seed packs so that they can grow the plants featured in the game, according to Positive News. The seed packages feature the artistic renderings from the game to make it really authentic.
“The skills that you have in the gaming world – like when you have to nurture virtual gardens – can be transferred into the real world,” Young told Positive News.
When applying for the seed packets, the gamers had to submit an application that explains why they wanted them. Here are some of the applicants explanations:
One applicant wrote: “[Guild Wars] saved my life during a period of deep depression. It would be an honor to grow [crimson sunflowers] in my yard to pay homage to the game and support the surrounding insects that could benefit from these flowers.”
Another wrote: We have access to a garden that has recently been cleared… and is now empty of weeds but also flowers. It would be lovely to replant some, and the video game aesthetic is quite the motivation.”
The first campaign was very limited with only 30 seed packets that went out in April 2024. “Because games are inspired by real-life plants, [there is a large] amount of plants in the game that are exactly the same as in nature,” Atanasovski told Mashable. “We made three bags, but we could have made one thousand.”
Appreciation of nature in games is a growing trend
Gaming and nature are not mutually exclusive as the popularity of SeedSaga showed. In fact, according to Mashable, in the gaming community talking about nature is thriving.
“There are so many things on Reddit and Twitter [now called X] where people are talking not about the games, like missions, or the quests that they're doing, but it's like spotting the landscapes that they're looking at, and appreciating them just like they do if they are on a hike in the real world,” said Young.
She added, “The things people talk about on Reddit are so breathtaking, It’s so similar to how you might be outside and take in a forest or something really amazing in nature. And I think it's not a matter of gamers having one or the other. We just wanted to remind them about the feeling and the surprise that they were getting in games, they had that with nature as well.”
SeedSaga is a project of the Agency for Nature initiative that was created as a response to research that suggested that UK citizens ranked last in Europe for their feelings of oneness with the natural world. Turning gamers into gardeners is a way to get people hands-on involved with nature.
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