There are gamer-branded flower seeds now - thank you, Guild Wars 2

12.04.2024 - 11:39 / rockpapershotgun.com

When I was a wee lad, my grandfather, an avid gardener, walked with me down to the end of his immaculately tended botanical kingdom, and bid I look upon his favourite flowers, bright blooms of Geraniums. He was a humble man, but even he could not disguise his pride at how wonderfully full and rich their colours and forms had come in this year. “Does the fragile beauty of these blooms not fill you with tender hope for the future?” he asked. “No, Grandad,” I replied, “these flowers are mid.”

I would like to make clear right away that I neither endorse or have received any recompense from the Seed Saga project. It’s a collaboration between advertising agencies Agency for Nature and Wieden+Kennedy and mmorpg Guild Wars 2, but the seeds themselves are free if you’re based in the UK, so it does seem fairly harmless with the caveat that they want your address and email to send you the actual seeds.

I write this item of news merely to spread amusing awareness that such things exist. To some, they are likely a surefire sign that late-stage consumer capitalism is working exactly is intended. To others, proof that Terence McKenna’s idea about reality being a self-replicating machine for producing absurdity was bang on the microdose. Personally, I think they’re at once very silly but also far better than another energy drink made of powdered chinchilla or whatever. Flowers are nice.

If you’re in the UK and you are interested in getting some free seeds of varieties either passiflora, flax, or crimson sunflower, you can go to Seed Saga’s site, tell them why you’re the gamer most deserving of a pack, and they’ll contact you if selected. Again, I’ve got no idea what they’ll do with your information, and while Agency for Nature seem on a level, Wieden+Kennedy have previously worked with McDonalds and Nike, so I’d say their scruples aren’t exactly +1 amirite gamers. If you’re intrigued about the place where games meet botany, but don’t want these seeds, our Edwin wrote a lovely piece on the delights of virtual botany for the Guardian a few years back.

I once couchsurfed with a guy in Berlin, one of whose hobbies was what he called 'guerrilla gardening,’ where he’d find the vanishingly scant small patches of natural soil dotted around the city and plant flowers there. I had previously considered this an incredibly worthy hobby, but I now see that man for the fool he was. Regular flowers are no longer epic enough to be considered anything more than nuisance weeds. The era of the gamer flower is upon us. I can’t wait to see what Razer do with this information.