The growing popularity of gaming’s surprise hit

Shooting, chasing, exploring – hit video games tend to have themes that set the pulse racing.

One of the world’s most popular new titles, however, is about something considerably more sedate – gardening.

Grow a Garden involves players slowly developing a little patch of virtual land. It’s something that, earlier this month, more than 16m people – many of them children – chose to spend their weekend doing.

That smashed a record for concurrent players set by the somewhat more adrenalin-filled Fortnite.

What is it about this plant-growing simulation that has got so many people hooked – and could it persuade more people into real-life gardens?

Players of Grow a Garden, which features on the online gaming platform, Roblox, do exactly what the title suggests.

When I gave the game a go, I was presented with my own little brown patch of land.

To the sounds of some relaxing music, I bought seeds from the local shop, and watched them as they grew, something that continues even when you are offline.

Once your garden produces a harvest, you can sell your items. You can also steal from the gardens of others.

“It’s a really fun game,” says eight-year-old Eric Watson Teire, from Edinburgh. He and his 10-year-old brother, Owen, are massive fans.

Eric said “a lot” of his friends at school are playing it too.

“We can do competitions with each other – like, whose got the most Sheckles [the in-game currency], whose got the best plant.”

They are not the only ones. According to Roblox, the game has had about 9bn visits since it was created in March. It says 35% of the Garden’s players up until now have been aged 13 and under.

It’s fair to say the premise does not appeal to everyone – there are online forums puzzling at the popularity of a game which its detractors say is “the equivalent of watching paint dry.”

Eric says the slowness of the game has an appeal. “There’s a bit of patience to it,” he explains.

Owen told the BBC he enjoyed the competitive element of it – but its virtual produce also caught his attention.

“Could there be a sugar apple – which is the best plant you can get? Or will there be a carrot, which is the worst?”

The gameplay can be sped up if you use Robux, the Roblox currency, which is paid for with real money.

Some players are very willing to do that. On eBay, it is possible to buy some of the most sought-after items – such as a mutated candy blossom tree or a dragonfly – for hundreds of pounds.

US-based Roblox is one of the world’s largest games platforms. In the early months of this year, it had 97.8m daily users.

Its vast empire includes some 40 million user-generated games and experiences, and Roblox is the most popular site in the UK for gamers aged eight to 12.

While many love the platform, there have also been reports of young people being groomed on it and becoming addicted.

Roblox told the BBC earlier this year it was confident in its safety tools, and took the approach that “even one bad incident is one too many”.

If people discover they love virtual gardening, might they be encouraged to take up the real thing?

Andrew K. Przybylski, a professor of human behaviour and technology at the University of Oxford, said it was possible the game could “plant a seed” that could lead to a passion for plants. But, overall, he’s sceptical.

“It is unlikely that a game like this will encourage real world gardening any more than Super Mario Wonder encourages plumbing,” he told the BBC.

Prof Sarah Mills of Loughborough University has carried out research into the experience of young people and gaming. She highlights a key appeal of Grow a Graden is it is free to play, but the in-game currency is important.

“This wider landscape of paid reward systems in digital games can impact children and young people’s experiences of gaming and financial literacy,” she said.

“It can also cause challenges for many families to navigate, changing the nature of pocket money.”

Gardening podcaster and BBC presenter Thordis Fridriksson, meanwhile, is hopeful that any interest in gardening is a good thing.

“Obviously the whole process is pretty different to real life, but it taps into the same thing which makes gardening so addictive, and that’s planting seeds and watching your garden grow.

“Fingers crossed some of the people who love the game will try growing something at home.”

Outside the living room in Edinburgh where they play the game is Owen and Eric’s actual garden, which both boys help in.

“I like gardening – and gardening in Grow a Garden,” says Owen.

But asked which one he prefers, he’s emphatic: “Grow a Garden!”