Can cosy games help us to manage anxiety?

Play and playfulness are at the very core of human culture: as children, we learn to play before almost anything else. Play is older than any culture or society. Yet, videogames and players have been at the epicentre of countless moral panics since the emergence of the medium, with the World Health Organisation recently adding “Gaming Disorder” to its catalogue of diagnosable addictive behaviours despite much protest from leading experts in the psychology of gaming.

My current research project challenges the pervasive theme in socio-cultural discourse that games are bad for mental health by looking at a genre of videogames that became popular recently, and curiously enough, during the pandemic: cosy games.

Games Can Be Cosy?

Games like Nintendo’s pandemic megahit Animal Crossings: New Horizons, or indie darling Stardew Valley, offer warmth, kindness, and a sense of safety devoid of immediate time-critical threats the like of which are at the core of other popular genres like shooters or sports games.

With roots in the mid-noughties boom of casual and mobile games, cosy games often incorporate abundance, cute animals, pastel colour palettes, lush nature, soft sound design, and soothing music. Solving ordinary problems like domestic duties, professional advancement, and managing friendships and family relations are central to many cosy games, as are mechanics that recreate pastoral fantasies like taking care of land, plants, or animals.

Spiritfarer for example is a cosy game about death and saying goodbye, Unpacking is a therapeutic game about moving into a new home and unpacking boxes, or in Coffee Talk we can play as a barista brewing coffee and creating latte art while chatting to the customers of a coffee shop.

The Project

This work is a continuation of my research into how, by looking at both the ways in which game designers talk about their work, as well as how games are designed, we can better understand how games engage us.

My recently published book Videogames and Agency, which was based on research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the National Productivity Investment Fund, is now available Open Access thanks to support from Leeds Beckett University. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how freedom to act in/with/through videogames is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles.

Taking this work further by exploring the socio-cultural implications through a generic lens, I am interested in exploring how cosy games offer a sense of comfort and can serve as a way to cope with, or push back, against anxieties caused by the ideology of neoliberalism, which emphasises productivity, progress, and measurable outcomes within our late-capitalist society.

At the same time, and perhaps less optimistically, sociological research on lifestyle media, including reality TV, cooking and gardening channels, and makeover shows, suggests that this type of content not only aims to depict everyday life but also promotes strategies for self-improvement and self-management, aligning with the values of neoliberalism such as individualism and personal growth.

I am putting these ideas into dialogue with research on games and emotions to resolve the tension intrinsic to cosy games: that even though they present as less threatening and stressful, at their core they are still games, and as such they present challenges that need to be overcome in order to progress.

The cosy games project is currently in the theory generation stage, and I will be presenting the hypothesis and preliminary findings from the literature review at the annual conferences of two international research organisations: one with a broader media and cultural studies audience (Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies Association), and one with a medium-specific audience (Digital Games Research Association). Both are invaluable opportunities to get early feedback on what is the groundwork towards external grant applications and subsequent further research outputs.