“Get out and touch the grass.” It’s a hackneyed trope often directed at gamers to suggest that they get out more. Fair or not, it feeds into the notion that the gaming community spends too much time tapping keyboards in darkened rooms and not enough time in the ‘real world’. But what if computer games could facilitate a tangible, meaningful connection with nature?
Well, now they can thanks to a new botany project that empowers gamers to cultivate plants featured in their favourite video game. The idea was that of Hannah Young and Aleks Atanasovski, two gamers who wanted to fuse their love of nature with their passion for gaming.
“The skills that you have in the gaming world – like when you have to nurture virtual gardens – can be transferred into the real world,” says Young. “Alex and I wanted to bridge that gap.”
