1971 – Oregon Trail with battle-to-survive elements
2002 – NitroGenius serious game launched by university in Netherlands to educate on nitrogen crisis in NL ag
2008 – Farming Simulator published by Giants Software (Switzerland), with new releases every 2-3 years, has sold over 100M copies/downloads 2008-2025
2009 – Farmville (USA), an ag-simulation social network game developed and published by Zynga
2015 – Farmers2050 and Journey2050 (nonprofit) sponsored by Nutrien, used by 4H and FFA in Canada, USA and beyond. Sponsors contests with cash prizes during USA national FFA convention.
2016 – Stardew Valley, a farm life simulation role-playing video game (“cozy game”)
2017: Real Farm (Netherlands) farming simulator game released, with development continuing only thru 2021
2018: Pure Farming (Poland) farming simulator game released, with little further development
2018: Cattle & Crops (Germany) farming simulator game released, with development thru 2021
2020: Segae (serious game for agro-ecology) developed by 6 EU universities. https://www.segae.org/ Adoption limited due to lack of entertainment and additional challenges.
2020-2022: several video games such as Farm Me developed to promote NFT, using battle-to-survive elements, roleplay and simulation. Most of these never took off when the NFT hype cooled.
2021 – FarmBeats for Students, educational gamification and STEM resource developed by Microsoft and distributed thru FFA
2022 – McCain launches Regen Fries game in collaboration with one of the largest metaverse platforms, Roblox, and the first NFT-themed restaurant, Bored & Hungry.
2022-2025 – FarmCraft (nonprofit) uses Minecraft platform and federal funding to teach agriculture
2023 – American Farming video game launches with mixed reviews
2025 – McCain relaunches Regen Fries w/o NFT to teach 6 principles of soil health for potatoes
2025 – GrowGarden created by teenager in Roblox logged >20M players in June
