Safety, abundance and super mutants: Playing with tend-and-befriend in cozy videogames

What makes a videogame cozy and how do we play with coziness? Cozy experiences have a long history of being simulated in videogames, from the ritual refuge of looking after animals in Harvest Moon (1997) to serving coffee on a rainy Seattle evening in Coffee Talk (2020). Despite this, the genre of cozy games, as it is understood in commercial games for entertainment, did not emerge until the past decade.

This presentation will explore the history and nuance of playing with coziness, using Agata Waszkiewicz and Martyna Bakun’s propositions of coherent, dissonant and situational coziness and its relationship to tending, befriending and storytelling in role-playing games.