Farming games have existed throughout the history of gaming, but just as mechanization changed the face of real agriculture, blockchain is promising to change the way we play farming games, starting with cannabis cultivation.
Whilst it takes a whole load of effort to be a real farmer (hats off to them), with farming games, you get all the warm fuzzy feelings associated with a bumper harvest, without waking up before sunrise to defrost your tractor. Bored of tending those fava beans? Don’t want to milk the cows? Save and log off, and you’re done for the night — perfect.
Farming games are fun, because unlike other genres where you mindlessly blast your way through alien hordes or fill the boots of a WWII G.I. Joe, farming sims keep your creative cup flowing, a constant source of inspiration for players who like to take time perfecting their little patch of paradise.
And game developers worked this out early-on. The first farming games were pretty simple. The first real dedicated farming simulator which gained widespread recognition was Harvest Moon, a SNES game released in 1996, which let players, well… farm.
But let’s not be coy, we’re all friends here. Some virtual crops are more fun than others. Sure, that wheat makes great bread. Your corn is as sweet as they come. But some prefer Cannabis over cucumbers. It’s just one of those things.
With the taboo around one of the oldest cultivated plants on Earth eroding, and the medicinal benefits of cannabis extracts being scientifically recognized, it seems like there’s never been a better time to virtually grow cannabis. And the developers at Nugbase are inclined to agree.
But first, let’s look at why the virtual farming industry needs blockchain anyway.
Why is Blockchain Good for (Virtual) Farmers?
After Harvest Moon’s success came a plethora of copy cat games and other farming games pitching in on the success, like the incredibly well received Stardew Valley, which was a diamond in the rough.
Stardew Valley provides a great virtual farming experience — the only problem is, you don’t technically own anything you make in-game.
But other than the Farming Simulator franchise, which is excellent if not a little intense (about as much mental work as real farming, with no real produce to show for it), nothing has really broken the mould.
Why would it, there’s only so many ways you can virtually farm, right? Wrong.
In traditional farming games, the virtual farm you spent hours and hours building, and your precious crops, are all stored either on a console hard drive, or if it’s an online game, they’re simply on a centralized server. Despite you working hard for them, they’re never actually yours. But what if there was a way to turn your virtual ranch and prized tomato into an immutable and scarce digital asset? That’s where blockchain comes in.
The tokenization of virtual property and items on the blockchain can turn your little vegetable patch, or huge agricultural empire, and all the rare and wacky crops which come with it, into a real world asset in the form of a non-fungible token, a digital representation of a unique item.
On the Ethereum network, where many blockchain games have already been built, these digital assets are built as ERC721 tokens — they don’t have any real ‘function’ like ERC20 utility tokens do, but they possess unique and collectible traits like traditional digital assets.
Now your digital tomato is stored immutably on a distributed ledger, provably yours and just like other digital assets, it’s free to trade.
Whilst crypto-critters have already been made with both Ethereum’s CryptoKitties and Tron’s Tron Dogs, those inert animals are just cryptographic collectibles —at present they don’t actually do anything, and they’re only worth trading for their scarcity.
But what about a whole farming game on the blockchain, with it’s own decentralized marketplace, digital asset crops, and virtual world? That’s what Nugbase are building.
Except instead of tomatoes, players can grow and trade ‘FLOWERs’ — representing cannabis buds, in the Flowerpatch game world.
Nugbase
Nugbase are an independent blockchain gaming company based in the Mountain View area, California. Like the open, blockchain based world they’re building, Nugbase have a self-management philosophy to game development.
The Flowerpatch.app Game World
Nugbase’s answer to decentralized cannabis farming is centred around ‘FLOWER’ cards. Each FLOWER card represents a unique and collectable cannabis genome, with many of them found in real life.
FlowerPatch.app lets users grow and collect cannabis cards, immutably stored on the blockchain; all whilst immersed in a ‘Harvest Moon-esque’ game world.
But unlike previous blockchain games, Nugbase have also built the immersive, massively multiplayer isometric game world of Flowerpatch, which is reminiscent of traditional RPG farming games like Harvest Moon, where players can plant and tend to their FLOWERs, spend SEED tokens, and eventually earn NUG tokens.
Nugbase’s SEED tokens are going to be the tokens of the Flowerpatch economy. SEED will be an ERC20 token, which will be spent by players within the Flowerpatch world for things such as new FLOWERs and farm upgrades, functioning as the games only currency.
Earning SEED will be directly linked, just like in real life, to your FLOWERs. Once your planted FLOWERs have completed their life cycle, Flowerpatch have planned that your FLOWERs can be harvested for SEED, and sometimes NUG.
Now here’s where the Flowerpatch team are planning to take the baton for blockchain games and carry it just that little bit further. Flowerpatch are developing their NUG tokens to be particularly special, as NUG is eventually going to be a redeemable gift card for real cannabis — although this is still in the pipeline.
So in addition to FLOWER tokens being digital assets which are provably yours, like CryptoKitties, you can plant, harvest them and breed flowers together to get great rewards both in game and in real life.
FLOWER Trading
Flowerpatch players can trade FLOWER cards between each other, provably and immutably on the blockchain.
Flower cards resemble buds of cannabis, with different traits, which you can plant and grow in the game world, and trade them between other players.
In addition to their intrinsic value derived from their scarcity, like the cryptographic cats and dogs of CryptoKitties or Tron Dogs, players can plant their FLOWER cards, and breed different strains.
Breeding has the potential to yield new and unique strains of FLOWER, each with different visual appearance, stats, and even the chance to be of a high rarity.
Players can access the Flowerpatch game world through their web browsers, but they’ll need some FLOWERs to plant! At the moment, early game adopters can buy and trade their FLOWERs on the OpenSea network, a peer to peer marketplace built specially for cryptographic collectables.
Early players can trade their FLOWER buds via the OpenSea platform.
The Flowerpatch game world isn’t the first blockchain game, but it’s certainly one of the most exciting, with an entire purpose built world and economy of its own.
Want to find out more about the Flowerpatch game?
Subscribe to their mailing list — https://flowerpatch.app/Or Join the Discord — https://discordapp.com/invite/4b8xyjZ
Listen to this article on the go — http://www.speakytext.com/player?url=28&embed=true
The author isn’t affiliated with Flowerpatch or Nugbase, but has been following their project from it’s beginning and thinks it’s super cool. He does have some FLOWER cards though.