Its been about a year since I wrote about the video game “Plants vs Zombies.” As I predicted, the game has continued its popularity, becoming a cultural phenomenon and cementing itself as the top search on the web that includes the word “plants.” Our own video that we made spoofing the game has been successful, being seen over 50,000 times. But that pales in comparison to the official PvZ music video that has gone from 4 million views a year ago to over 9 million today.
I think its safe to say the Zombies aren’t going anywhere for a while. The makers of the game, Pop Cap, have ported the game to every major popular gaming system, and there are rumors that a sequel game as well as a movie or tv show are in the works. I think its interesting that Pop Cap have not aggressively licensed the brand for merchandise, a fact that the fans of the game bemoan. According to the US trademark electronic search system, Pop Cap appear to have plans to make official spin-off products including board games, plush toys, comic books, trading cards, Halloween costumes, lottery scratch-off games and “entertainment in the nature of a television comedy series.” There is no indication that they or anyone else plans to market plants, gardening tools, seeds or anything actually related to the one thing in the game that is actually real: plants.
In the past, Pop Cap did produce some seed packets which they did not sell, but used as a promotional item for the game. I have also seen a metal tin which looks like a grow-it-yourself package, but has never been offered for sale.
Part of me really respects Pop Cap’s reluctance to exploit their Plants vs Zombies franchise by flooding the market with all kinds of products. That’s kind of refreshing. It doesn’t appear that we’ll ever see a Plants vs Zombies section in a garden center. But another part of me thinks that this is a huge missed opportunity to get kids and other young-at-heart gamers interested in gardening. Just as millions of kids have been inspired by games such as Guitar Hero to actually pick up a real guitar and begin learning how to play real music, perhaps the same could have been true with this game. But we’ll never know.
Pop Cap won’t enter the garden center because they don’t believe that gamers want to garden. They want to gamble. They want to dress up. They want to be entertained. Who wants to get their hands dirty?
What do you think?
~Art