How TikTok Created (and Confused) an Total Gaming Genre

I’m going to let you know concerning the second I noticed one thing had gone terribly fallacious with the phrase “cozy.”

It was 2 AM. I used to be taking part in Cult of the Lamb — a sport the place you run a cult, sacrifice followers, and battle eldritch demons in procedurally generated dungeons. My roommate walked previous, glanced on the display screen the place I used to be harvesting devotion from my brainwashed flock, and mentioned, “Oh cute, another cozy game?”

She wasn’t fallacious, precisely. The sport has cute woodland creatures. You can embellish your cult compound. There’s farming. But additionally there’s… you recognize. The ritualistic homicide. The cosmic horror. The poop.

This is what we’ve achieved. We’ve created a style that by some means encompasses each Animal Crossing and video games the place you actually run a dying cult. And I blame TikTok totally.

Here’s how we obtained right here

The time period “cozy game” existed earlier than social media obtained its fingers on it, however it was barely a whisper. You may need heard it in area of interest boards, utilized loosely to video games that felt heat — Harvest Moon, perhaps, or these outdated Cooking Mama titles, or some video games on Odds96 India. It described a sense greater than a set of mechanics. Something you possibly can play whereas half-asleep. Something that wouldn’t punish you.

Then got here 2020

You keep in mind 2020. We have been all trapped inside, oscillating between doom-scrolling and determined makes an attempt at self-soothing. Animal Crossing: New Horizons dropped in March, exactly once we wanted it most, and out of the blue everybody — not simply players, everybody — was speaking about visiting islands and paying off mortgages to a capitalist raccoon. The sport offered over 13 million copies in its first six weeks.

And TikTok took discover

The algorithm, in its infinite knowledge, began studying that sure video games drove engagement. Not due to expert gameplay or dramatic narratives, however as a result of folks wished to indicate off their digital cottages. Their little farms. Their organized inventories. The #cozygames hashtag exploded, finally accumulating billions of views.

But right here’s the factor about algorithms: they don’t perceive vibes. They perceive patterns. They see that Stardew Valley content material performs nicely. They see that Spiritfarer content material performs nicely. They see that Unpacking — a sport actually about placing issues in containers — performs nicely. And they begin making connections that really feel proper however aren’t truly significant.

Soon, “cozy game” wasn’t describing a sense. It was describing an aesthetic. Soft colours. Cute characters. Low stakes. The algorithm had created a style, and it was fallacious.

The lure

I talked to a developer who requested to stay nameless as a result of, as she put it, “I’m about to sound ungrateful and I promise I’m not.” Her studio launched an indie title in 2022 — a administration sim with some darker themes buried beneath its pastel exterior.

“TikTok decided we were a cozy game,” she instructed me. “We never used that word in any of our marketing. But the algorithm saw the art style and started pushing us to that audience.”

The outcome was a wave of gamers who anticipated one thing mild and obtained one thing… else. The unfavourable critiques rolled in. Not as a result of the sport was dangerous, however as a result of it wasn’t what they’d been promised by an algorithm they didn’t even know was making guarantees.

“We had people genuinely upset that there was conflict in the game,” she mentioned. “Like, any conflict at all. Someone wrote a review that said, ‘This was supposed to be my anxiety relief and now I’m more stressed.’ And I felt terrible, but also — we never said we were that.”

This is the lure. The “cozy” label has change into so commercially highly effective that it will get slapped onto something with cute graphics, whether or not the builders need it or not. And it’s created an viewers with expectations that no single sport may presumably meet, as a result of the class was by no means coherent to start with.

So what truly makes a sport cozy? 

I’ve been asking this query for months, and I’ve gotten solutions that vary from philosophical to absurd.

The mechanical definition can be one thing like: low stakes, no fail states, self-directed pacing. By this commonplace, Stardew Valley qualifies, however so does Microsoft Flight Simulator when you flip off the crash physics. Minecraft artistic mode is cozy; survival mode shouldn’t be. It’s about what the sport means that you can keep away from.

The aesthetic definition focuses on visuals and sound. Soft colours, mild music, cute characters. This captures why folks name Slime Rancher cozy however wouldn’t apply the time period to Elite Dangerous, despite the fact that each video games allow you to putter round at your individual tempo.

The emotional definition is squishier: a comfy sport is no matter makes you really feel cozy. I do know somebody who finds Dark Souls cozy as a result of she’s performed it so many instances that it appears like coming dwelling. A horror sport is cozy when you’re taking part in it wrapped in a blanket together with your associate, she argues. The coziness isn’t within the software program; it’s within the ritual.

And right here’s the place it will get attention-grabbing, psychologically talking.

Why these video games resonate so deeply with millennials and Gen Z particularly

Dr. Rachel Kowert, a analysis psychologist who makes a speciality of video games, suggests that video games providing low-stakes accomplishment — the completion of small duties, the seen progress, the absence of actual penalties — can perform as real nervousness administration instruments.

“There’s a reason these games often feature repetitive, simple actions,” she’s defined in interviews. “Watering plants, organizing items, following routines. These are inherently soothing behaviors that can help regulate the nervous system.”

We’re a technology that got here of age throughout financial collapse, local weather disaster, and a pandemic. We have been instructed to optimize every part, to hustle continuously, to deal with relaxation as laziness. And then we found that pretending to farm digital turnips made us really feel okay for just a few hours.

Of course we constructed a style round that feeling. Of course we wished to guard it, to categorize it, to make it findable. We have been determined.

But desperation makes us sloppy. We let the algorithm outline one thing that was by no means meant to be outlined. We let advertising co-opt a vibe. And now “cozy” is all over the place — on video games that deserve it, video games that don’t, and video games that exist in some liminal area between consolation and chaos.

I don’t know find out how to repair this

The label is just too commercially beneficial to desert now. Steam has a “cozy” tag. Publishers construct advertising campaigns round it. Developers who genuinely got down to make mild, low-stakes experiences now should compete with horror-farming hybrids and cult simulators for a similar viewers.

Maybe the reply is extra specificity. Sub-genres that really imply one thing. “Pastoral cozy” in your farming sims. “Organizational cozy” in your stock video games. “Cozy-adjacent” for issues which have the aesthetics however not the gentleness.

Or perhaps — and that is the choice I’m leaning towards — we settle for that “cozy” was all the time going to be private. That no algorithm, no hashtag, no advertising group can truly let you know what is going to soothe your explicit nervous system. That you may discover peace in a farming sim or a horror sport or a cult simulator, and all of these are legitimate, and none of them have to share a style.

The algorithm doesn’t know what cozy is. It by no means did.

But you do. And perhaps that’s sufficient.

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