What's Up with Grow a Garden?

I've recently been curious regarding the buzz around a new mobile game, Grow a Garden. And since I have kids and nephews that play Roblox a lot, I am a little bit familiar with this game. Grow a Garden is a custom game from Roblox which is basically a farming simulator. And just this morning while I'm drinking my coffee, I've seen a social media post like this:

source
A game having 16 million players is a lot! And to think this is a Roblox game where predatory microtransactions are everywhere. (I know because my son always begs me for more Robux🙃) I tried checking and it looks like the official revenue has not been disclosed yet. But judging by the reception it is getting, I would say it's in the millions of dollars now.

Farming Games Are Popular
And while the fame Grow a Garden is amazing, I wasn't really that surprised since farming simulator games has been very popular even back then. I remember when Harvest Moon was a thing back in the original Playstation.

source

I wasn't really a fan of this genre since it is tedious work and there's no saving the world from evil threat plot or anything, just a slow progressive grind into the harvesting season. But that being said, I know a lot of my gamer friends loved this concept.
source
And of course, who could forget FarmVille from the heydays of Facebook. The combination of a farming simulator and social media interaction was the perfect recipe for viral success. I've lost count of how many people have asked me to boost their plant production or something.

Thriving Grow a Garden Community
Now back to Grow a Garden, the fame it is receiving has seemed to transcend beyond the confines of Roblox. I can see numerous Facebook communities, subreddits, Telegram groups, etc. dedicated to it. I've also noticed a lot of peer-to-peer trading for in-game items using real cash. It's just like how MMOs have real money economies.

source
There's even trading websites now supporting these item trades like Eldorado. And the prices I'm seeing is insanely high considering this is supposed to be a game for kids. I wonder what's the ratio of adults that actually play this is.

The economy is so serious that there are now even YouTube channels and websites put up for players to monitor stock prices in real time! This is very interesting indeed and I wouldn't be surprised at the least if news broke out of success stories of kids and teens earning a fortune just from Grow a Garden.

Now it's piqued my interest and would try to play more of this game and experience its appeal first hand. But with all this hype, I also wish people would be as interested in real life gardening as well. I bet people would be more mindblown when they discover how much you can grow and yield from such a small space like a used soda bottle or can.