Browse any digital gaming storefront for long enough and it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually come across a certain word: “cozy”. This word is used so repeatedly to promote games that some are even considering it to be its own sub-genre, with entire social media channels, articles and communities based around “cozy gaming”. However, I think the term has gone far beyond its original intention and is gradually finding its way to be used in a way that’s doing more harm than good.
What started as a word used by the audience to describe their favorite games has slowly warped into a word being used by companies to tell you how to feel about certain games. An emotion has become a marketing tool, and the products they’re manipulating our emotions with sometimes aren’t even very good. Let me break it down more, because “cozy gaming” has some serious issues that need to be addressed.
Let’s start by making it clear that some games are, in fact, cozy! There’s nothing wrong with you as an individual describing a game as cozy, because you’re describing how it makes you feel either during or after playing it. Games that we’d conventionally describe as “cozy” have been booming over the last few years, with a sharp rise during the time of the pandemic when it felt like everyone in the world was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons whilst isolated. From then onwards, many indie developers and even some big-name studios have been working on more games to scratch that “cozy” itch. Much, much more games.
I enjoy some of the more traditional cozy games for myself, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve played Stardew Valley for years, Animal Crossing for over a decade now, I really enjoyed my time with Disney Dreamlight Valley and some of my favorite indie games often have “cozy” used as a descriptor for them. It’s nice to play games that are cozy, especially in a time where the outside world is so serious and gloomy. It’s hard to play certain games for escapism when we can see their plot unfolding outside of our windows in real life. It’s good to enjoy games that are cozy – what isn’t good is the way that corporations think they can use the word themselves.
As we’ve established, to be cozy is to feel something honest and genuine, and it’s something that will be subjective to each person. However, marketing teams across the gaming industry have realized that “cozy” became an important descriptor used in gaming recommendations, and tried out using the term for themselves to promote games. It has been an enormous success, but now we’re at the point where we can’t go five minutes without hearing about another new “upcoming cozy game”, but how can something have a feeling assigned to it if nobody has even played it yet?
It feels manipulative to me, because companies are essentially trying to sell us feelings. A packaged product of rationed comforting emotion. For the low price of $29.99, you can feel cozy in the 35th early access farming simulator released this week – and come back next week to get some more “cozy” with the animal-themed walking simulator of the month. It’s starting to feel dishonest to describe a game as cozy, and feels more like a ploy to get our money in exchange for the promise of an emotion, rather than an honest label given to a game by a community of likeminded people that experienced a shared emotion with the same game.
Just because a game has all the elements of a stereotypical “cozy” game doesn’t make it one. In fact, it’s gradually starting to feel like the opposite. Companies know the term “cozy” sells, so now they’re just slapping it on everything, including unfinished, buggy and lackluster releases. It’s not short on features, it’s “streamlined”, it’s not poorly written, it’s “low stakes”, and it’s certainly not boring, it’s “cozy”.
I won’t name any certain games to try and be fair to the developers that are certainly trying to have a genuinely cozy game, but this is a problem in the community that needs to be addressed. We’ve bonded together and grown entire online spaces around games that made us feel ways that we needed to at certain moments, but it’s time we call out the corporations that are setting up shop outside our village to try and sell us comfort in a bottle that’s just pure slop. We may like games that are cozy and simple sometimes, but we won’t accept unfinished products and half-baked releases with a pretty color palette slapped on top. We, the players, should be the ones who get to decide what is and isn’t cozy, not the marketing teams that would slap the term on anything if it means it’ll sell an extra few copies.
Ultimately, the “cozy” gaming experience is not uniform, and we shouldn’t let companies use the word to decide how certain games feel on our behalf. For example, I find a lot of comfort playing Castlevania and Dark Souls, but I’d hardly throw the term “cozy game” around and slap a pair of overalls and a straw hat on Dracula. It’s about what I feel that makes it cozy, and the experience I get from these wonderfully and meticulously crafted games that make me feel that way. Don’t let them take the term from us, and don’t fall for what they exclusively deem to be “cozy” in exchange for your money.
That’s my opinion on the issue with “cozy” gaming today and the way it’s being co-opted by companies to both sell us a feeling and tell us how to feel about the games we’re playing. Do you agree with this way of thinking? What games make you feel cozy? Let us know in the comments down below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking gaming news and thoughtful essays like this one.
