Hi! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my response, to read the original manifesto written by OP, and to share your thoughts on the manifesto and on my response. I want to start by saying that I fully agree with the post that you had to the actual manifesto ("the experience of comfort instead of suffering is not a moral failing! things don't have to suck for life to be worthwhile! pain can be sold to us by capitalists just as easily as pleasure can!/no more running from joy! more cozy games!").
I agree with every word that you said. Experiencing comfort does not constitute a moral failing. Choosing to exist, at all, in a world that asks for your extinction is in of itself resistance. Capitalism sells us pain all the time, encourages us to feel it, and then sells us the salves. Capitalism sells us the idea of revolution and then subsumes it. I do not want to run from joy. I want to share true joy with my brothers, sisters, siblings, cousins, and friends. I want to make more cozy games, including cozy games in which I find joy.
I am going to reflect on your response and your question with compassion for myself, and I hope that you can, too! I would love for this to be a dialogue.
To begin, the cupcake analogy does not have to relate to high sugar content. I would say the same thing about anything, anywhere. I used the cupcake because OP used the cupcake. In general, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and shopping is not politics, but organised effort such as genuine boycotts in conjunction with other organised actions can lead to genuine change in the world around us. You can replace the cupcake with beef tallow (to use an example associated with white masculinity), and I would say the same. In the situation where I can choose between two things, and one thing is better than the other thing without costing myself life and limb, I will generally choose the thing that more closely espouses my values.
(Further reading: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/21/purity-culture/)
I want to address the main bulk of your critique, however.
>"You keep bringing up how many fascist themes there are in so many other video games, with a focus on shooters and rpgs. you could have easily titled your manifesto 'kill fascism in games' or something like that. but you, and so many others here in this jam and elsewhere, explicitly chose to target cozy games. why? why the 'it's okay to relax' genre and not the 'kill all the definitely bad people and prove your inherent supremacy' genres? there's no particular reason that the cupcake analogy only needs to apply to goods with a high sugar content."
I actually do talk about how many other video game genres have fascist themes, at length, in other places. I talk about how tabletop games have a focus on fascist themes. I talk about I pirate almost all games that I play and only spend my money supporting specific titles, primarily by indie developers, to the utmost degree that I can, because I want to do what I can as an individual and collectively to
When I am with players who play RPGs, or developers who develop RPGs, I am constantly talking about how we can make RPGs that do not include fascist themes, instead of continuing these genre conventions.
When I am with players who play FPS, or developers who develop FPS, I am constantly talking about how we can make FPS that do not include fascist themes.
When I am talking about action games, or milsims, or tactical games, or visual novels, or racing games, or sports games, or fighting games, or whatever other, I also talk about how many of these propagate fascist themes.
When I am with fellow board game players or developers, I am talking about how both American-style board games and tabletop games, and European-style board games and tabletop games, and even Japanese-style board games and tabletop games either propagate fascist values or propagate other values.
I spend many hours speaking to novelists, short story writers, and poets about how works can unintentionally recreate the very traumas that they are seeking to heal from. I have written letters to editors. I have commented on works. I have spoken directly to authors.
I wrote two manifestos during this manifesto jam about specific topics, because the ways in which RPGs/FPSs/[insert genre here] propagate fascist themes and the ways in which language learning games propagate fascist themes often differ. I chose to write about two genres that I greatly care about and that I have played many games in, and that I am currently developing games in. I wanted to discuss how fascist themes propagate in these genres because I want to do something different in my games, and I used this as an opportunity to reflect and put down my thoughts. I would, in fact, love to hear your thoughts about ALIENS DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH, my other manifesto also talking about fascist values in a specific genre!
I wanted to give specific examples of mechanics, and how I might change those mechanics. Picking a very broad topic, such as all fascist themes in all games that ever existed, would not have given me the space to give granular, specific examples of genre conventions.
Yes, I can write an essay about how "killing all the bad guys" is fascist. In fact, I explicitly gave such examples in other comments and in my manifesto, KILL COZY GAMES. It propagates fascist values to make a game where the good white guys kill all the bad brown guys. It propagates fascist values to make a game where the good [guys of any ethnicity] kill all the bad [guys of any ethnicity]. It propagates fascist values to make a game where the cool person with a sword slaughters monsters who are conveniently Designated Evil Forever.
I am in a union. When I go to my union meetings, I can say, "Wow, the government propagates fascist values," and pretty much everyone in my union would agree. But, instead, when I go to my union meetings, we are usually discussing how we (as the union) can change things for the better, what values we will fight for, and how we will execute the fight for those values. Yes, it can affirm us to simply state who Bad Guys are, or that Bad Guys Are Doing Bad Things. But, I find it enriching to brainstorm with my fellow union members how we can make the world actually better through our actions and the execution of those actions.
My fellow union members, as well as others, have called out concerns in my plans before. When I was given a task to reach out to "shareholders" (here meaning members of the community that would be affected by our decisions, not the corporate meaning of shareholders), I initially suggested a more conventional outreach plan, based on successful outreach plans I had seen previously.
My plan initially excluded even more marginalized shareholders than I had initially perceived.
My fellow union members pointed out the flaws in my plan and gave me ideas on how to shed conventions and use more unconventional tactics so that I could reach out to ever more marginalized members of the community. My fellow union members pointed out that I had to think about the people who were not in the room, and even the people who were so not in the room that i hadn't even thought of them.
Because of my fellow union members respectfully and compassionately pushing back on my assumptions, I was able to craft a much more robust outreach plan that unwound in multiple stages and, in doing so, affect my community and neighbours much more positively.
Several of the marginalized community members whom I was able to interview gave vital insight that changed the nature of the project we were working on and made it better benefit the community.
(I am intentionally omitting details to avoid identification.)
None of this could have happened if my fellow union members did not explicitly call me out.
I am not saying this to pat myself on the back. I am saying this because I greatly value compassionate and respectful communication, even when that communication might made me feel guilty or embarrassed or ashamed. I want to have my conventions challenged. I want to continue the lifelong task of rejecting fascism and refining myself with better frameworks in which to think about the world.
Some years ago, I released a visual novel and received much praise from many people, but I also had some criticisms. Some criticisms were bad faith takes seething mad that I had made my visual novel about wlw. But, other criticisms pointed out issues in my characterisations and commented on how I had (unintentionally) promoted non-consensual practices (in this case, a kiss) as romantic. Reading those comments really made me think. I did much more reading about consent and rape culture as a result, and it taught me a lot about my own indoctrinated beliefs regarding romance, and also how I can make things better, without making things "boring" or "rote".
I spoke about cozy games and language-learning games because I love these genres and I want to make works in these genres. I have also worked on RPGs before, and I thought at length about how those conventions propagate fascist values. At the time, I chose not to release the RPG that I had been working on, because I had learned over its development how many conventions i had thoughtlessly included. I decided that I would work on other things, and then come back and figure out how to rework the RPG, or not, or perhaps make a different RPGs.
I intentionally am not linking the games that I am working on to this essay to avoid harassment, so please do not ask. If you want "proof" that I actually do develop games, let me know what kind of "proof" you want, and I can provide it with identifying features removed. I take anonymity on the internet seriously after prior experiences.
>"you've acknowledged cozy games as games often played and created by and for the marginalized... and you've chosen to focus on *them* as not being good enough and not the genres created primarily by cishet white men that far more consistently (and often intentionally) propagate those fascist values?"
If I walked up to my government building today and expressed my concern that i want my government leaders to stop being so fucking fascist, do you think that that would change anything?
If I walked up to my fellow union members and expressed my concern that a local project is unintentionally replicating trauma, do you think that that would change anything?
Earlier this year, a local site was putting together a celebration for women's rights. I took the time to speak to one of the workers on-site because I felt like the language used in their celebration unintentionally excluded trans and nonbinary people. The on-site worker thanked me graciously for my contribution and took the time to correct the language. I do not know what happened with that specific celebration, but I know that I have heard trans and nonbinary people speaking about the importance of inclusive language to make them feel safe in other circumstances.
Someone could have said, "you've acknowledged the local site is run entirely by and for the marginalized... and you've chosen to focus on 'their signage' as not being good enough and not the signage created primarily by cishet [local dominant ethnicity] men that far more consistently (and often intentionally) propagate those fascist values?"
Yes, because I was able to enact positive change at the local level by pointing out issues within the local site's signage, while I do not think that I can individually do anything to enact positive change about the extremely violently transmisogynistic billboard that was put up by (presumably) some cishet [local dominant ethnicity] man who exists in my area.
(Yes, I know that I can deface it, etc., but I cannot actually 'critique' that signage out of existence. I can only remove it by violence.)
>"i will ask you to take some time and sit with this question: is what you're doing workable? does focusing your critique on asking the marginalized to do better actually move things in the direction of your values? or are you simply demanding a heavier burden and more intense scrutiny on an already burdened and scrutinized population, making it even harder for them to create and explore things?"
I completely agree that marginalized people are held to unfairly high standards. It kills me when I see a reviewer refuse to purchase an indie game made by marginalized people because of perceived "bad" content and then turnaround and spend significant money on a gacha or Nintendo game made by people who are actively donating money to destroy marginalized people and whose games are brimming with fascist values.
But, I cannot actually change the content of gacha or Nintendo games by 'critiquing' them.
I could, however, change the content of an indie genre, and in turn receive excellent ideas about how to improve my own games, by critiquing conventions of the genre.
(I am being reductive intentionally in this paragraph.) I do not feel like I needed to write about how Call of Duty propagates fascist values for this jam, because I think that the average jam participant almost certainly perceives Call of Duty as fascist. I did, however, feel like I needed to write about how Stardew Valley propagates fascist values, because I do not think that the average jam participant perceives it as such.
I have, in fact, written about how Call of Duty propagates fascist values, elsewhere, to other audiences. And, in those cases, I do not even use the words "propagates fascist values", because those audiences will not care whether or not Call of Duty propagates fascist values. Instead, I think about the language that will speak to those audiences' values and tailor my message accordingly.
When I play cozy games, I want to escape from the world. I want to experience joy.
A cozy game which propagates the same fascist values as before holds no joy for me. I cannot experience joy when I am tasked with accumulating wealth or destroying nature into productivity.
I want to see cozy games that give me joy. So, I wrote a manifesto about how cozy games currently fail to provide joy for marginalized people who think like me, and how we might make them better.
>"obviously i think the answer is closer to the latter right now, but that's why i'm asking you to sit with the question. you don't have to take my answer just because i said it, but you do need to reflect on it with compassion for yourself. "
I hope that my extended explanation of from where I am coming will help you perceive my thoughts differently. If not, I genuinely would like to hear from you, so that we can continue to enrich one another. Thank you for having this dialogue with me!
Moonplum.