Abstract: This chapter looks at the independent video game Viridi, an indoor gardening simulation in which the player has to tend a pot of succulents. This rather unique video game premise offers such an apparent lack of challenge that it might seem unlikely to engender a state of immersive play. However, as we shall see, a closer look at the game's modalities reveals that the gradual establishment of a particular form of immersion is made possible through two specific factors: an engagement and commitment to the game building up over time, and a hermeneutic investment in the game's practice.

Keywords: immersion, video game, Viridi, zen, plant media

The video game distribution platform Steam, through its interface, informs players of how much time they have dedicated to a given game since its installation. I have never fully understood why keeping track of the amount of time spent on a game could be considered valuable information by a player. Who could gain any sense of pride from having spent dozens—if not hundreds—of hours in a virtual territory? The number of hours played over time can become impressive—or worrisome—for some players. Maybe it has to do with the immersive pull of a game.

The mechanics of some games and what they offer to players can more readily explain why the number of hours played can sometimes reach three or even four digits—think of the ever-expanding Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) or of games without a clear end goal like Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe, 2016). Yet, at the time of writing this chapter, I have spent more than two hundred hours “in” the video game that will soon be discussed in the next few pages, even though it is a game that… well, that doesn't ask of its players to do much in terms of gameplay. As we will see, this surprisingly high figure of time played has a lot to do with how I came to consider what I qualify as “playing” this game. In this chapter, I will perform what can loosely be called an “auto-ethnography” of my time spent playing Viridi (Ice Water Games, 2015).