Towards the aesthetics of cozy video games

Abstract

While among game journalists and developers the term ‘cozy games’ has recently been gaining popularity, the concept still rarely is discussed in detail in academic circles. While game scholars put more and more focus on the new types of casual games that concentrate mostly on starting discourses on mental health, trauma and the experiences of marginalized people (often referred to as ‘empathy games’), the discussion would benefit from the introduction of the concept of coziness and the use of more precise definitions. The article discusses cozy aesthetics, showing that their popularity correlates with sociopolitical changes especially in Europe and the United States. First, cozy games are defined in the context of feminist and inclusive design. Second, it proposes three types of application of coziness in games depending on their relationship with functionality: coherent, dissonant and situational.

Negotiating Anthropocentrism and Ecologies in Cozy Games

“…In this example of commercially dominant cozy games, the player engages in anthropocentric coziness, which grants them a complete control over their environment and allows them to indulge in the fantasy of a world in which there is ecological safety and stability. This aligns with Waszkiewicz and Bakun's (2020) model of cohesive relationships between cozy aesthetics and a cozy message, engaging with an outdated agrarian fantasy in which the island is untouched by the outside world and unaffected by many of the daily stressors of urban living. As Sydney Crowley notes in an analysis of Stardew Valley (Concerned Ape, 2016), games which indulge in simplistic fantasies of attaining real estate avoid the discourse of critical agrarianism and the reality of land acquisition (Crowley, 2023).…”

“…This is where I have to adjust the definition of coziness discussed by Waszkiewicz and Bakun (2020). In a report published by Tanya X.…”

Soft Horrors: The Visual and Ludic Safety of Dark Cozy Games

“…In our 2020 article on coziness, Martyna Bakun and I discussed the relationship between coziness and other game themes, identifying three types of applications of coziness in video games, depending on their function in the game as coherent, dissonant, and situational (Waszkiewicz & Bakun, 2020). The concept of dark cozy games proposed in this paper corresponds the best with the second type, the dissonance, as it describes games that juxtapose with each other seemingly incompatible elements of design and narration, such as soft and non-threatening aesthetics with difficult, uncomfortable narratives or topics.…”

Cozy Heterotopias in JRPGs: A Foucauldian Perspective on the Spatiality of Coziness in Japanese Role-Playing Games

“…チューベル). In both languages, the name is associated with a sense of cuteness or nostalgia, the latter of which Waszkiewicz and Bakun (2020) tie directly to cozy games. The English name Hickory Dock is a reference to the eponymous nursery rhyme, starting with the lines: "Hickory, dickory, dock; the mouse ran up the clock."…”