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What if so-called “cozy gaming” was… well, less cozy than many assume? At PAX West 2024, the wonderfully-named Revolution but with Strawberries: The Sweet Subversiveness of Cozy Gaming panel set out to make that argument… and, in doing so, made the case for cozy games being increasingly important in today’s day and age.

Seeking to define the genre — which includes everything from Animal Crossing to GLAAD Award-nominated sim Wylde Flowers and beyond — panelists including educators Dr. Fara Nizarmani and Sonia Michaels, and game designer Patricia Pizer, made the point that the ‘cozy’ name is somewhat misleading, in that it leads some to suggest the games avoid any uncomfortable topics.

Instead, Michaels argued, cozy games as a whole tend to suggest that “ when bad things happen or have happened, or it's telegraphed that they have happened, they are addressed in ways that actually help you get through to the other side of them… It's like when bad things happen, here's how we can engage with them. That's why these games are often really good for people with anxiety.”

“This would fall under what [researcher] Nicole Lazzaro would call ‘mind-altering’ or ‘mood-altering,’ where you're playing a game because you want to change your state, whether that's you want to get amped up or you want to calm down,” added Pizer.

“A lot of these games that are under that ‘cozy’ umbrella actually give you the chance to work through trauma or grief or loss,” Michaels suggested, pointing to Wylde Flowers as a prime example. “You go and you live on this island to take over the farm for your grandma who's not doing great. And, at one point, your grandma becomes bedridden and passes away.”

“The grandmother's death is not the only death that you deal with, because the character that you play is pretty much an adult the time you get there [and] there are other characters who have dealt with the same thing,” continued Pizer, ‘and so you catch people at different stages of grief and how people of different ages handle it. The other people in the village are witness to all of this, and their actions show you what you should do when someone is in this situation over here.”

The idea that cozy gaming can model inclusive community building is key to the truly subversive nature of the genre, panelists argued. “I think that cozy gaming is an absolutely wonderful ground in which to plant the seeds of inclusive and progressive ideas, and stimulate growth in those areas,” Michaels said as the panel drew to a close. “If people don't like it, they don't have to play those games. There's plenty of other games they can play. But for those of us who are looking for community-focused experiences that allow us to feel the whole range of emotions and see the whole range of gender expressions and all of those things, this is a place where many of us, I think, can feel at home.”

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