A KAIST research team led by Professor Chang Hee Lee from the Department of Industrial Design developed a new digital game system in which a living plant directly nurtures and shapes a game character, opening new possibilities for plant-centered interaction beyond human-centered gameplay.

Digital games are usually built around a familiar relationship: people control the game, and computers respond. A KAIST research team has turned this relationship around. What if, instead of pressing buttons or manipulating a screen, a living plant could guide the growth and transformation of a character in a digital game?

Led by Professor Chang Hee Lee from the Department of Industrial Design at KAIST, the research team developed Plant.play(), a digital game system that views plants not merely as decorations or sensors, but as living participants in play (Image 2, 3). The study, titled “When Plants Play: Rethinking Plant Materiality in Digital Games,” was presented at ACM CHI 2026, one of the world’s most prestigious conferences on human-computer interaction, where it received a CHI Best Paper Award.

The Plant.play() system reads subtle biological signals generated by a plant, as well as surrounding environmental conditions such as light, temperature, and humidity. It also reflects the plant’s daily rhythm, which changes between day and night. These forms of information are translated into the growth and behavior of a digital companion character in the game. For example, when the plant’s environment changes, such as when light becomes stronger or weaker, or when temperature and humidity shift, the character grows and responds in countless different ways according to the plant’s state and rhythm (Image 3, 4).

In this process, the role of the human user also changes. The user is no longer someone who directly controls the game or manipulates it to quickly gain points. Instead, the user becomes a participant who observes the plant’s slow changes and unpredictable responses, imagines their meaning, and interprets the relationship between the plant and the digital character (Image 5). 

The significance of this research lies not only in proposing a new form of interaction in digital games. Plant.play() shows how digital technology can move beyond tools that simply respond to human commands, and instead help create new relationships with diverse beings such as plants, animals, robots, and artificial intelligence. By allowing people to experience plants not as objects to be managed, but as beings to spend time with and gradually understand, the project raises an important question for a future society rapidly transformed by AI. How might future technologies help humans not only communicate with artificial intelligence, but also empathize and build relationships with many different forms of nonhuman life?