The video game industry has a strange addiction — and it’s not to innovation, but to repetition. Every year, the spotlight seems to fall on the same few titles, sequels, and brands. We celebrate Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto as if they are the only pillars holding up gaming’s vast world. But what if our industry stopped orbiting around individual titles and instead rallied around topics — ideas and genres that represent the diversity of what games could be?
If the industry wants to truly grow, it’s time to move beyond brand loyalty and toward theme-driven promotion. Imagine seeing entire waves of gardening simulators, toy-based adventures, and shop-management experiences flourish with the same energy that first-person shooters have enjoyed for decades.
The Quiet Bloom of Gardening Games
Gardening games are some of the most peaceful, satisfying experiences in gaming — yet they remain largely overlooked. Titles like Stardew Valley, Garden Paws, and Grow: Song of the Evertree offer therapeutic, creative spaces where players can slow down, plant something beautiful, and watch it grow. These aren’t just casual distractions; they teach patience, ecology, and reward systems that feel emotionally sustainable.
Why don’t we see hundreds of these games instead of a handful? The answer lies in how publishers and media outlets promote games. They market names — not themes. A gardening game without a recognizable brand or famous developer is often dismissed before it even reaches the spotlight. But imagine if there were a full cultural wave of gardening titles: one about alien flora on a distant planet, one about restoring gardens in a post-apocalyptic world, another about spiritual growth through cultivation.
If the industry started supporting the topic — gardening as a creative, meaningful mechanic — developers would be encouraged to innovate within it. We’d get a thriving subculture of players who value peace, creation, and beauty over combat. The potential audience is already there; it’s the visibility that’s missing.
Toy Worlds: The Power of Play in Miniature
Games centered around toys capture something magical — a childlike imagination where anything can come to life. Think Toy Story 3: The Game, LittleBigPlanet, or Trombone Champ in its absurd, playful spirit. These titles remind us why we fell in love with games in the first place: because they let us play without consequence.
And yet, games about toys are rare in the mainstream market. We have shooters, sports titles, and RPGs dominating release schedules — but where are the games where you are the toy? Where every world is a bedroom battlefield or a sandbox of creativity?
Promoting this topic could do more than entertain. It could expand the psychological and artistic range of what we think games are for. Developers could experiment with scale, materiality, and movement. Imagine controlling a toy soldier in a physics-driven diorama, or a stuffed animal trying to save its owner from nightmares. There’s infinite space here for design, storytelling, and emotion — if only we celebrated toys as a genre, not as a gimmick.
Shops and Stories: The Soul of Simulations
If there’s one topic that naturally connects players with purpose, it’s the shopkeeper experience. Running a store in a virtual world — whether it’s selling potions, armor, or antiques — taps into the part of human nature that loves routine, trade, and personal achievement. Games like Moonlighter, Potionomics, and Recettear show how fulfilling this gameplay loop can be.
So why don’t we have hundreds more? Why is the “shop game” still treated as niche instead of fundamental? Shops are the beating hearts of most RPGs and MMOs — players spend countless hours trading, upgrading, and customizing. Yet few games make running that economy the main attraction.
If gaming culture shifted toward promoting this topic, developers could explore economic ethics, player psychology, and creative storytelling from the merchant’s point of view. It’s a narrative space that’s inherently human and endlessly expandable — a reminder that games don’t always need to be about saving the world. Sometimes, managing a small corner of it can be just as heroic.
The Problem with Promoting Titles Instead of Topics
The obsession with promoting individual titles — and not ideas — has caused a kind of creative tunnel vision across the industry. When a single game becomes a cultural moment, studios rush to imitate it. That’s how we ended up with endless FPS clones, battle royales, and survival-crafting hybrids.
Promoting topics instead would do the opposite: it would encourage diversity within similarity. Imagine 100 games exploring gardening — each one unique in tone, art style, or mechanic. One could be horror-based (The Garden Never Sleeps), another comedic (Weed Whacker Tycoon), another spiritual (Roots of Heaven). The variety would expand the audience rather than fragment it.
Pros of Topic Promotion:
- Encourages innovation through shared creative spaces.
- Helps new studios gain attention by attaching to recognizable ideas instead of expensive IPs.
- Builds genre communities rather than brand fandoms.
- Supports healthier development cycles (no rush to outdo the last mega-hit).
Cons:
- Risk of market saturation if trends aren’t managed responsibly.
- Harder to create a singular marketing “hook.”
- May require new ways of organizing digital storefronts and awards.
But those are good challenges to have — they mean the industry is finally maturing.
Why We Need More Games Like Ari and Civilization
Some titles already point the way forward. Ari, though lesser known, exemplifies emotional intelligence and creative storytelling in small spaces — a reminder that games can nurture connection instead of competition. Meanwhile, Sid Meier’s Civilization has been teaching strategy, diplomacy, and the weight of human history for over three decades.
These games succeed because they represent topics, not just titles. Civilization isn’t just a franchise — it’s a framework for learning how societies rise, fall, and evolve. If we had a hundred different “civilization” games, each exploring culture from a unique perspective — one focusing on art, another on ecology, another on philosophy — the educational and cultural benefits would be enormous.
The industry needs that same mindset across the board. Imagine a hundred Ari-like experiences that teach empathy and storytelling through design. Imagine a hundred Civilization-style games where the mechanics of power and progress are told through new lenses — music, technology, spirituality, even environmental stewardship.
The Future: A Hundred Seeds in Every Field
It’s time for the gaming industry to think less about single, marketable titles and more about collective creative movements. Instead of hyping one battle royale per year, we should be nurturing entire ecosystems of games built around meaningful topics: gardening, toys, shops, architecture, nature, music, myth, and more.
If developers, journalists, and players all promoted topics instead of just titles, we’d get the same richness of variety we see in film and literature. No one says, “We already have enough love stories.” The same should be true of gardening sims, toy adventures, and shopkeeper fantasies.
The future of games doesn’t depend on the next blockbuster — it depends on the next idea. And ideas, like gardens, grow best when you plant many seeds.
Concept But Genius 
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