In July 2025, the biggest show on Earth wasn’t on HBO, Netflix, or Disney+. It was a Roblox game called Grow a Garden. Kids, teenagers, parents, and grandparents, everyone growing freaking gardens on Roblox. 25M+ concurrent players logged on for the game’s brilliant “Admin Abuse” Saturday updates, where everyone experiences the same digital event simultaneously, appointment viewing just like the Sopranos finale, but 2x more people, delivered weekly for months on end.
Just 6 months later the branches are bare; Grow a Garden has declined over 90% in users since its peak usage. Why?
Your First iPhone
Let’s take a trip back to 2010. You owned your first iPhone and it was a wondrous time of magical digital experiences. Do you remember when we were downloading photobooth apps and adding unicorns with laser beam eyes onto into our pics? Do you remember “Yo”?
Yo.
That’s all it did btw, raised $1.5M in venture funding, look it up. Turned out to be a downloadable meme, didn’t last.
But, in 2010 exploring apps, like surfing the internet had been 10 years prior, was briefly its own form of meme-y fun.
And, of all the apps - one category reigned supreme and still does, accounting for at least 50% of all consumer spending within the App Store - games.
Between 2010 and 2025, mobile phone gaming went from a practically non-existent business (but big ups to pre-iPhone Snake and Bowling) to by some estimates $100B+ per year.
And, if you don’t play one of today’s super hit mobile games - Royal Match, Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, Clash Royale, etc. - then you undoubtedly know people who do. Mobile gaming is ubiquitous and universal, a central pillar of the always-on mobile attention economy.
Toys and Games: The Distinction Matters
But before the billions, there were the millions, and for those of us who were there, there were the OG mobile gaming hits. Prime among them in 2010: Paper Toss and Angry Birds.
One of these is a toy, and of one of these is a game. This distinction is at the bedrock of making money from interactive entertainment.
In Paper Toss, you toss balls of scrunched up paper at a little waste basket. There is a desk fan that puts a bit of pressure on the player to offset aim to compensate for the breeze.
Paper Toss is a toy - it has a static and highly simplistic cause and effect system.
In Angry Birds, you must solve dynamic, physics-based puzzles by using a slingshot to fling the right type of projectile at the enemies’ fortresses, attempting to beat a nearly endless series of levels each with a unique fortress requiring unique tactics to destroy.
Angry Birds is a game - you are being continually challenged to learn, evolve, and execute.
This toy vs. game paradigm is not just a fun debate for game design nerds, although we love it, it’s a powerful business framework that explains how money is made from digital media.
A toy relies on novelty and is meant to occupy a moment in time before moving onto the next toy.
A game can continue to entertain and delight for years. The current lifecycle of a live operated game is factually indefinite - World of Warcraft now going strong for over 20 years, for example.
Gonna Make This Garden Grow
This brings us back to Grow a Garden, but toy vs. game is no longer the right framework for today’s socially driven digital landscape.
The question is - is Grow a Garden a meme or a game?
Memes come and go, of course. Say no more.
Games can last forever.
If you read the LinkedIn hype, Grow a Garden was the big one, the game to herald in Roblox as the new YouTube, a multibillion user platform with something for everyone.
Executives at Roblox were crowing about 40+ year old women logging on to play Grow a Garden, toy companies were clawing at each other to get the license, and the rights were quickly optioned to a movie.
But, what do you really do in Grow a Garden?
Plants seeds, harvest plants, get currency, buy seeds -> Plants seeds, harvest plants…
Is this like Stardew Valley, the indie darling game of the last decade with 40M+ copies sold, where you farm, fish, forage, spelunk, and build a house and life in a small town?
No, no it’s not.
Meme Me at the Corner of Internet Ave. and Roblox St.
Grow a Garden is not a game, it’s a meme.
Why is it not a game? Because it only had 15-20 minutes of novel experience before rote repetition set in. And that lack of depth and long-term entertainment value has caught up with the usage data. Reality came a-knockin’.
But with Grow a Garden barely hanging on in the top 20 games on Roblox now, what does it mean that so many hypemasters and corporate managers thought that Grow a Garden, despite only having existed for a few months, was a mega franchise for the ages?
Hype Cycle > Common Sense.
Nothing wrong with hype, or making money off of hype. It’s a great business.
No one thought dabbing or planking were here to stay. I would argue, most trends will run their course within… 6 or 7 months.
Let hype be hype. Let a meme be a meme. And please people, let Roblox be Roblox.