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Thank you for reading, for considering the ideas, and for sharing your thoughts! One must think about the culture we choose to weave into language when we make it. Creating conlangs requires creating conculs (constructed cultures) just as much.

Thank you for reading and for giving your thoughts as well! The more languages I learn or learn about, the more it expands my mental possibility space for how communication can occur. This improves my communication in English, too. I find questions of interpretation and translation endlessly fascinating, the tensions in how to translate content, meaning, cultural significance.

Thank you kindly for reading and for taking the time to respond! I appreciated the chance to think about the specific issues I have with many of these games and think about how I would improve them. I love these games, and I want to see them care more about people!

I have not played it, but this makes so much sense. I hate it. I want games where characters happen to be nonbinary and otherwise just go on adventures. I do not want The Corpos to explain what being nb is. Just have a character use they/them or ze/zir or whatever (not that all nb people use alt pronouns) and go off. Deltarune is better nb #rep than Dragon Age can ever be just by virtue of letting the nb character be A Person.

Thank you for this comment too.

Thank you for writing this.

This is so very real. The art about which I care exists in the moment that a person brings it to life through their interpretation. That person could be me or someone else. The art exists as a transient change in that very moment. The thing I create, whether a book or a video or a game, exists to inspire the creation of art through that person's interpretation, but it is not the art itself.

A post-capitalist world is inherently interdependent.

Very fun! Thank you for sharing! I love pixel art and stylised graphics over graphic fidelity. Hyper-realism actively turns me away from games, though I would never refuse to play a game over it. Give me more fleas and sesame seeds! Lovely dithering.

I love you too. Thank you. I truly love my players too, and I love the developers whose games I get to play. I can think of nothing else I would rather spend my time on than this, the most wonderful medium I have yet encountered.

I could not agree more. Fuck substitution ciphers. Give me an entire constructed language to learn, cowards.

Our understanding: "that we will not become great at our creative pursuits, that is the siren's call, that we continue attempting in spite of the knowledge we will never achieve the highest of our skill, but we continue to eat because we want to do so". Thank you so much for writing and sharing. I am so hungry.

Wow, I love this so much. I love making games anonymously with my friend. I love my friend. I love sharing. I love making things together. I love to be enriched by my friend and to enrich my friend. You are so right. Thank you for existing and for writing this.

That sucks. I want more games with nonbinary people that just let them be nonbinary without drawing a bunch of cringy attention to it. Is this about Dragon Age? Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Thank you so, so very much for reading!

25. "- I have this in my head for my next game, though we are not a farming game. We still have the basic game loop of accumulating currency to exchange for goods, which has the possible issue of leading players to try to accumulate faster with no thought to the community. I want to keep the game grounded within something recognisable to current life, so that the feeling of subverting it hits better. We need the exchange of goods and labor for the fantasy of being able to have autonomous control over your own labor, the ability to value other’s efforts, and the choice to spend some of your labor towards your community. We have a bit of an easier puzzle to solve, because our game is not strategy based. But I still don’t want to mess up the core incentives in the game. Pokopia does an interesting thing where you can barter and trade for items. It’s a cool subversion, though there is still money in the game so it gets undercut a bit. And you again are incentivised to hold onto whatever resources you do have. If we do have foraging, I want to include the ethics of foraging, which include only taking a small amount, leaving enough for other people, animals, and the plant itself. Maybe an incentive to donate what you don’t need? Stardew has that system with the community center, where you are incentivized to give back to the community. Unfortunately with the growth system, it can end up paralleling a “relying on generous billionaire” type thing, so a system that takes it automatically may work better? Though there are pros and cons to both. In concept, you WANT to give your players the agency to make pro social choices on their own. Forcing their hand undercuts that lesson. Anyway, just initial thoughts!"

If I were making a game like this, I would think really hard. It is not easy. But I outright disagree with the idea that we need money and wealth accumulation in  a game in order to "have autonomous control over your own labor, the ability to value other’s efforts, and the choice to spend some of your labor towards your community". These things can and will exist even when money no longer exists, and it existed before money existed. They exist now even in situations where money is irrelevant. We can think. We can rise above conventions. We can create new and interesting core incentives that do not rely on propagation of fascist values.

For example, I am making a cooking game about "running a soup stall". Most games about "running cooking stalls" (or bars, or what have you) either feature wealth accumulation or explicitly have protagonists who are "above" wealth accumulation in some fashion due to having extreme power or magic. I am talking about games like VA-11 Hall-A, Magical Delicacy, Burger Bois, Galaxy Burger, Coffee Talk, Tavern Talk, Kemono Tea Time, Sips and Sonnets, and more. These games either explicitly include money as a central mechanic, or they explicitly explain why their protagonist alone does not have to worry about money even though everyone else does.

I want to think about a game set in a better future.

So, in my game, the protagonist lives in a commune where money does not exist. Instead, everyone works for a couple hours a day, and they can choose not to work, but people do because, as you said!, most people find work over which they have autonomy fulfilling and meaningful, and most people love to craft for others, care for others, and/or help others. The protagonist gets ingredients and supplies delivered from others in the town. People come to the protagonist to request soups, and the protagonist makes them soup.

This game's complexity comes from having to make soups which nourish the people who come to the stall, in a combination of puzzle-like activity and self-expression. For example, a vegan character may request a meal with balanced micronutrients and so much protein, and you have to figure out how to make that happen. A character may be looking for yummy soup and have requests for specific outlandish flavour combinations that you have to wrangle, and this character's arc involves them explicitly healing and becoming happier as they get fatter by eating delicious food. Another character may be trying to lose weight for health reasons while still finding yummy and nutritious food to eat, and they may require special consideration to ensure that they have enough nutrition and flavour in their dishes while limiting calories. Another character is trying to recreate the flavours of their hometown. Other characters may have religious dietary restrictions, or severe allergies to many common ingredients, or very strict flavour/texture control due to autism, or folate and iron deficiency due to pregnancy, or other health issues leading to particular food considerations, or personal preferences requiring careful thought in how to maintain.

The character will have to juggle flavours of a dish, such as salty or spicy, with more esoteric characteristics, such as texture qualities or mouthfeel or uniqueness, with macronutrients and micronutrients, with cultural considerations. The ingredients available will change over time due to seasonal agroforesty practices which include conservation, shortages, windfalls, traders from distant markets, and so on.

The player will unlock new ways of cooking ingredients and new ingredients through maintaining mutual aid networks throughout the commune. The player is not a saviour and so cannot control everything, but the player can make individual lives better and so nourishing one's community which in turn improves the player's life.

The player will be able to influence NPCs through how the player chooses to nourish them.

I plan to use this game to interrogate relationships with food at the site of cooking and eating, to show the difficulties and tensions of such a world, to showcase a better future, and to ponder the ethics of how we raise people dependent on us, such as children, to interact with food. For example, the player is also raising A Creature and must feed it, and I have been thinking about mechanics which will give the player autonomy over raising their Creature, while also demonstrating that the Creature has agency in its own right, while also reflecting on what I want to say about nature vs. nurture. I want to instill good habits about respecting autonomy, not forcing food consumption, and voluntary exposure to new food, without forcing the player because, as you said, forcing the player undercuts the learning. I am still working this out. I am also still working how exactly I want to handle player agency in terms of influencing NPCs by nourishing. I have prototyped a few substories to test various methods, wherein I want to respect both NPC autonomy and player agency in the story of influencing those around them. I have a lot of work to do, and fortunately I am working with my best friend! But, I am always trying to root through my work for fascist values and explicitly expel them or revise them.

Note that I am not calling my mechanics The Right Way To Go, just A Way To Go Whereby I Resist Fascist At Every Possible Turn.

I am certain that my game will still let some fascist values slip through because I am indocrinated in fascism. But I will listen to critiques. I am making this game for myself. If I do get a seething review about how my game is fascist slop, I will read it earnestly and genuinely, delighting that someone cares about my game and this genre and this future enough to have seriously thought about the mechanics. Obviously, if I get a review from some white supremacist who hates that I value fatness, I will just laugh. But if I get a review from someone who wants to make the world better, I will take that seriously.

I am not saying that you have to do that. I am just sharing my thoughts! Genuinely!

Back to your game!

You accurately identify the tensions in your game design which will undercut the themes you are trying to achieve. You accurately identify where the fascist values slip through due to genre conventions and poison the beautiful game you are trying to create. Do not let the poison in. Resist. Fight. Show a better world and a future worth fighting for. Let me escape from the grimness of the world for two minutes by showing me a world that isn't grim, not because I am closing my eyes and ignoring its poison, but because we have actually healed. I believe in you!

Or don't! But then, do not be surprised when people regard your game has espousing fascist values, in addition to non-fascist values, because...it does!

Here is a content warning I would appreciate: content warning that a "cozy game" still wants me to reduce my bodily autonomy to how much profit I can make with it, that a "cozy game" still wants me to demonstrate that I value others' efforts by expecting them to reduce their bodily autonomy to much little wealth I am willing to give them for their body. In wealth accumulation, we are all selling our bodies for profit. Show me a better way. I cannot escape to a world that is only light and fluffy by virtue of ignoring the fascism that undercuts all the beauty and goodness.

(I do not use beauty in the fascist sense here. I think that sewers, sludge, piss, shit, vomit, etc. can be beautiful because it is part of our world that is ours. Ugliness, too, is good.)

26. "More reactionary Post script: I made Calico bc it felt radical amongst all the (warning, reductive) War With Guns and Girls with Boobs games, and even the beautifully depicted games that were either gender neutral in expression or viscerally masculine (gender expression is a lofty concept so caveat again that gender is a concept and I happen to be both a woman and feminine, and I don’t assume that’s always the case) to make a game with exactly what I personally wanted in one. The community of devs I know making these games are all people wanting to express unique perspectives. Literally everyone in our game’s discord is autistic and queer. To call that ENTIRE genre fascist is genuinely mind boggling and we gotta stop. You gotta abolish the cop in your head telling people (especially marginalized people) to stop making certain kinds of art, and you gotta just make more art."

I agree completely that it is radical to make games that include women, autistic people, or queer people at all. I, too, do not want to make more War With Guns and Girls with Boobs games. But you also have to abolish the cop in your head telling people (especially marginalized people) that they have to incentivize people with money and wealth accumulation, or no one will feel cozy in their game. You have to abolish the cop telling people that they cannot dream of worlds where wealth accumulation doesn't exist, or where we honour sustainable and Indigenous farming practices, or where we have to keep propagating these fascist values jsut because the games we played in our childhoods or the other games made by other marginalised people did those mechanics too. You have to abolish the reactionary kneejerk reaction (redundant statement is redudant) that anything made by a marginalised person is automatically above critique. You and I are just as capable of being fascist as the whitest, straightest, able-bodiedest, cissest, most masculine man alive. We cannot ever forget that. We can hurt with these hands and we can also heal.

I have not seen a single take in this jam that the entire genre of cozy games sucks. I have seen takes that specific common mechanics within that genre suck, and I stand by those, just as I stand by the fact that the mechanics which teach players to gun down brown people in first person shooters suck. Would you say, "You gotta abolish the cop in your head telling people to stop making certain kinds of art" when those "certain kinds of art" are War With Guns and Girls with Boobs? I would definitely tell people to stop making War With Guns where white people kill all the brown people and are heroes for killing all the brown people. And I would tell people to stop making Shops With Labor Exploitation where profit and wealth accumulation are king and we have to deprive our patrons, whom we supposedly love, of wealth in order to progress in our game.

I would love to hear your thoughts. I have tried to read good intentions and discuss in good faith. Please let me know if I appear to have misunderstood anything. I greatly care about your work and want to see you succeed and be happy.

Thank you for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us!

16. "This is a sub genre that usually revolves around either the novelty of experiencing the details of a different life, or escapism in being able to either live a different life, or life similar to your life, but with a lot of the traumas of capitalism or their individual ability constraints removed."

I do not want to live a life similar to my life, because my life exists in a fascist hellhole. A game which propagates fascist themes can be critiqued on those terms. We can acknowledge racism, for instance, without replicating it in our works.

Imagine a game about running a shop in a post-racial cleansing world where everyone is white and able-bodied. The creator could say, "I just wanted to make a make similar to my life, but with a lot of the traumas of racial cleansing removed." The game can have the most wholesome themes imaginable of helping out one's grandmother and forming a loving, high trust community of able-bodied white people, and still be espousing the most heinous fascism imaginable. I use this exaggerated example to express the concept that a game can have cozy vibes and even positive themes and still propagate terrible, horrible fascist values that put people like me and other marginalized people in direct need of cleansing and violence.

Showing a game where capitalism exists but does not cause trauma propagates fascist values. It propagates the fascist lie that capitalism can exist without violence and suffering.

Showing a game where the player must accumulate profit and power propagates the fascist values that one must amass power to stay comfortable, and that one can escape capitalism by becoming sufficiently rich and powerful to no longer feel its ill effects.

We are not free until we are all free. I do not want to become the boss. I want to have no bosses whatsoever.

17. "The genre is very literally usually made by marginalized people, so I think we should consider that when discussing it."

As I mentioned earlier, we all live in a society. Just as we have to contend with the fact that white feminism  often inflicts horrible violence onto brown people, or the fact that environmentalists (which are also literally usually marginalized people) often inflict horrible violence onto Indigenous people, or the fact that gay/bi/lesbian people can inflict horrible violence onto trans people, we have to contend with the fact that marginalized people can propagate fascist values.

Many of the rightwingers who actively harass marginalized people online are themselves marginalized people. Many women, brown people, queer people, and Indigenous people actively agree with and vote for policies that target, maim, and kill marginalized people, including themselves.

Just because a genre has a lot of marginalized people does not make it above critique or scrutiny.

18. "I have seen takes stating that farming sim fans are the same people watching trad wife content. This is extremely removed from the reality of those groups. Taking on caretaking/”domestic” roles is not the same as tradwife ideology. The ideology of trad wives is that they are subservient and that performing their gender role is a moral value. Caretaking or nurturing games revolve around an entirely different fantasy as mentioned above. Trad wife conservative gardening/ caretaking/ baking/ child rearing is based within the context of specifically serving their husband. A game that does shelf its narrative in motherhood is also not inherently problematic, as that expected role is a material reality of many people, and that reality being reflected can either be glorified or critiqued, or just accurate story telling in various executions."

I have not seen these takes so I cannot really comment. I can say that the manifestos in this jam, which I have read, have not had takes like this. I do not see anything wrong inherently with a game about motherhood or farming.

I do actually think that a subset of people exist with an overlap of farming sim fans and trad wife content, notably in the "cottagecore" type of space.

I have seen marginalized people espouse desires to escape into an unspoiled wilderness and live there. Such desires drip in settler-colonialism and fascism. Thoreau and his ilk, who waxed poetic about living by themselves in the woods, actually relied on the labour of "servant"-class people and "servile female" (mother, wife, sister)-class people. They simply did not see those people as human, so they perceived themselves as alone in their huts where they had all their meals fixed and clothes cleaned by "non-human" servants. Cottagecore and the desire to escape into an imaginary "unspoiled wilderness", only to tame it, relies on presupposing both Indigenous genocide and invisible labour.

I do not think that the average marginalized person playing a farming sim is actively seeking out tradwife content.

Yet, they are choosing to play out a similar fantasy, which presupposes that "unspoiled wilderness" exists (Indigenous genocide) and that we can "tame it" through chopping trees, fishing endlessly, building increasingly elaborate dwellings, etc.

19. "“I don’t dream of labor” is a phrase that is extremely useful in its context, but sometimes gets misunderstood as people not ever dreaming of any work. What most people mean is that they don’t dream of creating value for shareholders or a boss. Most people DO really love the craft of those jobs, or even the service of those jobs. The issue is in allll the other stuff. Customers allowed to treat you poorly, the value of your labor siphoned away without even leaving you with a livable wage, required hours being higher than the amount of time it would take to literally hunt and forage, defeating the purpose of community entirely. I even loved the labor of my call center job! I really enjoyed doing my best to solve their problems. What I couldn’t handle was only having 3 minutes to go to the bathroom, with a system where you were literally not allowed to unplug from the system at any other time. 4 uninterrupted hours of emotionally regulating myself and others with an unpaid lunch in between."

I completely agree. I do not see any of the jam manifestos saying a single negative thing about the mere concept of a game in which one performs a service or a craft. Even first person shooters or violent turn based RPGs show the player performing crafts and services, as soldiers or mercenaries.

Yet, we must also stop dreaming of generating profit or of wealth accumulation as a desirable state. As long as we desire wealth accumulation, we are propagating fascist values. Wealth accumulation inherently cannot exist without wealth deprivation.

I could see the value in a cozy game where, for example, the player unionises  or begins in a union and thus contends with capitalism, but from the perspective of fantasizing about how one can improve or have a cozy scenario. But I want the wealth accumulation itself to not exist as a desirable mechanic in a game like that.

Removing the traumas of capitalism by ignoring them or pretending that they do not exist only propagates fascist fantasies. Removing the traumas of capitalism by imagining an actually better world to escape to, one that we could fight for in our current world, has value and gives us hope for the future. And such better worlds should not teach us to value the things that fascists value.

20. "So, the critique may then be that the games “glorify” these jobs. Except that also isn’t true. I’ve played the popular sim games, and basically all the barista ones include a LOT of commentary on how disrespectful customers are (one game is literally about how impossible it is to figure out what someone is trying to order), how hard it is economically etc etc."

No, I actually think that this misudnerstands the critique, at least the critique that I have personally read. The critique that I have personally read is, "These games glorify wealth accumulation."

I would love to see a game about being a barista in a post-capitalism world. Disrespectful and annoying "customers" (or, perhaps, patrons, or people who ask you for help, or neighbours, or family members, or friends, or whoever) will still exist in the world's most luxury automated space communism, or in the world's most Indigenous-run communes.

But do not make it about wealth accumulation. Enough!

21. "Stardew Valley, the biggest cozy game out there, is literally overtly and constantly telling you about how the big corp is bad and how this small town is impoverished. (It is valid to critique the details of how this plays out with people turning their farms into productivity factories in play, without throwing out the concept altogether) So this again seems like an issue of assuming what a game was without playing it."

I agree with those critiques of Stardew Valley. I also think that the entire concept of Stardew Valley is also a fascist propaganda, in the sense that it espouses the dream of a single individual saving an impoverished town through bootstrap labour and hard work, which explicitly includes combat and violence, and which demonstrates that NPCs will inevitably fall for you through sufficient wealth accumulation in the form of gifts.

I do not think that the critiques stem from assuming what a game was without playing it. I think that the issue stems from not understanding the critiques, perhaps.

22. "Cozy games actually give people who are in an unsafe mental state a way to engage with deeper themes safely. Instead of staring at the wall, they can play a game which reminds them to engage with their community, or engage with nature. A reminder that they can feel joy and comfort reminds them to fight for those things. I love media about nature or any kind. A serene image of a forest with the birds chirping makes me want to leave my house, go to my local eco activism group and fight to keep that image possible. I’m hoping to instill that feeling (and some actionable tips) into my next game!"

Hooray! I agree with you entirely about this. I hope that we can fight to keep that forest with those birds, as well as to return human presence to that forest as good neighbours and part of nature ourselves.

23. "How we move forward and improve the genre:"

Yay!

24. "-Critique specifics! If you wanna call a game fascist, talk about a SPECIFIC game (that you have played a majority of) and critique their execution! Specify sub genre! Bring up examples where you saw it done well, or theorize how you would fix that issue! Fun thought activity for the comments! Farming games generally have a goal of connecting to a player who is interested in nature, power fantasy of being physically able to do it, and power fantasy of autonomy over your own labor etc. Stardew has a ludo narrative issue where the puzzle like gameplay leads to an unintentional subtle theme of exponential growth and resource hoarding. What would you implement to try to fix that?"

I agree! I also think that it can be worthwhile to critique genre conventions and genre trends. This does not indict an entire genre. It only talks about notable trends within a genre. For example, I can say, "It really sucks that fandom at large does not care about wlw or yuri," without me saying, "I think that every single person in 'fandom' hates wlw and yuri and hates gay women, bi women, pan women, wlw, and lesbians." I can say, "It really sucks that so many cozy games are about wealth accumulation or taming an unspoiled wilderness," without me saying, "I think every single cozy game on the entire planet should blow up."

The manifesto, "The Game Where You Let People Starve," has some really good specific examples of how we could tackle better farming games. I highly recommend playing it if you have not already, because it goes over specifics! I would only be regurgitating its themes.

But I can give examples of two of my own cozy games which I am actively working on right now, which I will do so at the end of this post.

Hello! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for making games. Lovely. I want to respond. Please note that I will be agreeing with some sentiments and disagreeing with others in my response. If you do not want to read that, please click away now, or at any point.

I (Moonplum) wrote one of the manifestos against a specific type of cozy games, [KILL COZY GAMES]. I do not speak for the others who wrote manifestos against some kinds of cozy games. I also make cozy games. I am working on a "cozy game" right now, an optimistic title about making soup for others in a commune.

I am going to copy your entire transcript and discuss it point-by-point, because I think that I will find it easier to point to specifics rather than to summarize.

1. "I will say in summary, that our discussions would be a lot more productive by mentioning specific games. Multiple times I've seen statements where I'm unsure what game they are referring to. Sometimes I notice they mention a game later as an example, but say the game is missing a feature it definitely has. I wonder if we're basing a lot of these discussions on our assumptions of the contents of these games, rather than the actual contents and details."

I agree entirely. I will try to give specifics. I think that some of these aspects may relate to people having different interpretations of what specific features mean, which leads to discrepancies. For example, one person may say that Game X lacks meaningful relationships, while another person may argue that Game X contains NPCs with whom one can fill up a heart metre by gifting flowers. The second person may view that as a meaningful relationship, while the first person may not, leading to different sentences using the same wording.

2. "I wrote this in between busy weekend parenting pls forgive my mistakes. Also please note I’m not responding as a call out for one person, I’ve seen a lot of these takes, so it’s a general response thing!"

I am responding to you in particular, but I am not attempting to call out anyone. I simply liked your manifesto and wanted to respond to it earnestly and sincerely to open a dialogue.

3. "First, let’s define some concepts."

Yay! I love definitions. Thank you for sharing with me what you mean. I will try to do the same in my response.

4. "Comfort games/ media: Any game/media that you personally find comforting. Entirely unrelated to content. Some people watch American Psycho over and over for comfort and familiarity, some people listen to metal music to calm down or remember a good memory of a concert."

I agree.

5. "Cozy games: Marketing term to cover a certain style of game that has a market of players looking for that style. (marketing is not just about money, it is also the act of connecting art with a person who will see and experience your art) Definitions of this vary in details, but it usually means something “soft” aesthetically and game wise. Game wise, they can either be easy and simple to play, or they can be challenging in a way that creates positive sentiment, like solvable puzzles or rhythmically flowing action. Challenges can be calming, in the way a sudoku can be. They may have any range of themes, from completely safe, to emotionally challenging, but usually have some method of safety in the way they approach it. The themes usually involve healing, growth or hope. There’s also usually a concept of nurturing/caretaking, either healing a place or community. There is an interesting relationship to gender, in that these concepts are traditionally “feminine”. Caveat that gender is a construct, so I’ll say it approaches femininity as a style or genre. The genre emerged as a reactionary descriptor basically defining games that did not fit into traditional showcases, usually action/adventure games with adult themes and emphasis on violence. (this is not a commentary on the value of those things, just that they were the majority)"

I agree also with this. I even mentioned the distinct between so-called masculine-associated genres and feminine-associated genres in my discussion of KILL COZY GAMES. I also agree that "cozy game" is a marketing term for both game and audience. I agree with the general vibe of having a method of safety, healing, growth, hope, nurturing/caretaking.

6. "I made Calico starting in 2017 ish, back then finding a publisher or showcase was very tough. Except for nintendo showcases, we were told we didn’t thematically fit with most publishers or showcases. The Wholesome Games showcases were the only showcase that catered to my style of game. I don’t have time to find the correct stats, so you’ll have to trust me that the overall demographic of any cozy games showcase is going to have more marginalized devs than average, and more marginalized gamers than average."

I watch the Wholesome Games direct every single year. I agree and commented on the fact that "cozy games" have more marginalized devs and gamers (players) than most other showcases. I completely concur. I did not write a manifesto called KILL FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS even though I also think that the FPS genre propagates fascist values, as I explained in my manifesto. I wrote a manifesto called KILL COZY GAMES because I think that marginalized developers and players, more than anyone, should have access to comfort games and cozy games that do not propagate fascist values. Yes, I think that there should exist first person shooters which do not propagate fascist values, too. However, I do not think (and I am not saying that you said this) that genres by and for marginalized people are above criticism. Marginalized people exist in fascist societies and learn these values. We must actively reject and resist the propagation of these values in our art and in our leisure.

7. "So, why do players play cozy games?"

8. "First we should all understand that people do not only do or play one thing. If someone primarily plays Cozy games, it’s likely they find catharsis elsewhere. I consider myself a “cozy gamer”, I primarily play cozy games in my spare time. This year I also played Disco Elysium and Blue Prince and adored them. I also played adjacent games, like replaying Okami, or Legend of Zelda. People engage with artistic media to guide an emotional response. They may want different feelings at different times. During a panic attack I may want something calm and distracting, when I’m mad I want something cathartic. At different times a hopeful story may fill me with hope, or existential dread. All genre of games and other media work together for a spectrum of different thoughts and emotional states. We also use different forms of media for different purposes. I play mostly cozy games, but I watch mostly horror and drama media (though I can’t watch gore bc I get a physical response that makes me faint). I can’t read suspense because my ADHD brain tries to skip ahead in the page, so I mostly read nonfiction."

I agree with this. I play all sorts of different games, from Armored Core to Kemono Tea Time to A Song of Sunlight to Sticky Business.

9. "So let’s explore some Cozy game critique-"

Yes.

10. "“Cozy games are devoid of substance and used to escape and have fascist themes” Devoid of substance:  - Cozy games are not more devoid of substance as a genre. All game genres have writing heavy or writing light games in them. All games genres have ludo narrative dissonance causing the written themes to conflict with the gameplay. Bad or light writing is a valid critique of an individual game, not the whole genre."

Yes, I agree. I do not think that any of these critiques is dismissing the entire genre of cozy games, however. In every single one of the critiques I have read, I have seen the writers explain exactly what kind of cozy game they do not like. For example, in "I HATE YOUR COZY GAME", the author, for whom I do not speak, explains that they specifically dislike games which espouse the concept of "unspoiled wilderness" or "the pursuit of profit is desirable". In "The Game Where You Let People Starve", the author, whom I do not speak, explains that they specifically dislike games which teach players harmful farming practices, such as monoculture.

I have certainly seen right-wingers and so forth dismiss cozy games as a genre, yes, just as they dismiss anything remotely related to women, or brown people, or disabled people, or whatever. They would dismiss anything I made. However, I do not think that the manifestos to which you are responding dismiss every game in this genre as devoid of substance.

Yes, it is easy to defend any genre by saying, "You can't call an entire genre devoid of substance, because the genre will vary." I cannot say that the entire roguelite deckbuilder genre is devoid of sustance, even if I do not care for it whatsoever, because at least some of its games certainly have good writing or "heavy" writing in them. I agree that all game genres have ludonarrative dissonance and bad or light writing is a valid critique of an individual game.

However, I think that one can still discuss trends in a genre.

For example, I think that one can discuss how, among first person shooter games, many but not all of them propagate the fascist values of defending one's "good and wholesome" nation against "evil" foreigners. Not all first person shooter games do this. Enough first person shooter games do this that it can warrant a discussion.

In a similar fashion, for example, not all white people make fun of the food that brown people eat (to use a relatively innocuous example), but enough of them have done it that it warrants discussion. If one interrupted every discussion of this with, "But not every single white person who ever existed has made fun of a brown person's food, so you can only critique Uncle Bob as an individual, and not white people as a group," you would be technically correct, but also missing the purpose of the discussion.

To use another example very near and dear to my heart, many turn-based RPGs propagate fascist values. I love turn-based RPGs and got into gamemaking for them. I play them all the time. I also interrogate the fascist values common in the genre. No, not every turn-based RPG ever made has fascist values. However, enough of the genre conventions propagate fascist values that I want to dissect them. Traditions do not get to propagate just because they have propagated up to this point. We get to decide which traditions we carry and which we discard or change.

I do not think that any compassionate person who is seriously thinking about and critiquing the fascist themes common in cozy games is saying, "Every single cozy game has these values or is devoid of substance." They are using "cozy games" as shorthand to refer to recurrent patterns, themes, and conventions used widely in the genre, which warrant scrutiny.

11. " - I honestly believe the biggest reason for this misunderstanding is people assume from the cover art that a game doesn’t have deeper themes. If you watch any of the cozy showcases, you’d see pretty quickly that every game description is like “Work with your commune to help your grandmother with her taxes”, “Run a cafe where you ask people their trauma”, “take over a farm and learn that walmart is trying to take over the town and poison the water system”. Sometimes these games have deeper themes as you delve deeper. This could be a critique of the marketing, but it could also be people’s assumptions that something cute must be shallow. The same people who look at American Girl dolls and think it’s vapid when the accompanying books talk about war crimes (literally)."

I do think that this happens, yes. I think that some of the people who dismiss cozy games do so because they want mature games for mature players such as themselves, and they do not think that light and fluffy games can have social commentary or value.

I do not think that the people writing these manifestos think that way, necessarily.

The writer of "The Game Where You Let People Starve" even explicitly talks about ways in which one can keep a "cozy game"  about farming for a commune, while changing the mechanics to no longer propagate fascist themes.

Wanting to improve a genre does not equal dismissing a genre.

Furthermore, the presence of themes such as trauma or queerness does not negate the presence of fascist themes. A game where you have to turn a profit can propagate fascist themes even while it simultaneously propagates radical queer acceptance and celebration. These can coexist, and one neither absolves nor damns the other. Most games, in fact, espouse both good and bad values, and everything in-between.

To use the RPG example, many RPGs espouse values of self-expression and bravery in the face of hardship, while simultaneously espousing the idea that power accumulation is inherently desirable and that certain classes of people or beings can be genocided without second thought.

"Stardew Valley is meant to show that Walmart is evil" and "Stardew Valley propagates fascist themes of profit/wealth accumulation, obedient NPCs who do your bidding in exchange for gifts, endless renewal of resources without having to practice any kind of conservation or kinship, etc." both coexist.

12. "Escapism - Any media can be used to escape. Catharsis itself can be a method of ignoring actual growth and progress. Video games as a media have been criticized as escapism since they started. Considering that, the only difference with Cozy games is that they generally tend to be escapism aimed at marginalized people. Almost all of them involve escaping to a place where you benefit from your own labor, have autonomy, are in a community that is walkable and high trust where people form bonds with their neighbors. Saying there should not be comforting games is like saying no one is allowed to take time to experience any joyful art, or like, a cupcake idk"

I agree. However, we can choose what we escape with. Show me the person who said that comforting games should not exist. If a person told me that they find comfort in shouting into a pillow, I would nod. If they told me that they find comfort in shouting racist and queerphobic slurs into a pillow, I would probably pause and suggest that they find a different way to comfort themself.

Similarly, to use an absurd example exaggerated on purpose to make a point, if someone is enjoying a cupcake, I would say, "Yay!" If someone is enjoying a cupcake that can only be made from the severed limbs of marginalized people, I would say, "No!!!"

Is it not worth for me to at least interrogate how my cupcake was made? For me to, if I have the capability to do so in this world where there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, try to choose the cupcake made by compensated labour in an environmentally conscious fashion over the cupcake made by child slave labour? Suppose I have two identical cupcakes in a store next to one another, but one is made by a company that poisons the water and the other is made by a company that (supposedly) does that less. Shopping is not politics, but I would probably pick the latter, all else being equal.

Is it not worth it for me to interrogate the assumptions in my cozy games?

If a game asks me to escape to an ideal world, and that world still punishes characters for being fat or gay or brown, then that is not really escapism. If that world still wants me to hire employees and then profit off of them through wage-theft, then that is not really escapism, even if I personlly can live in a walkable society.

A walkable society means nothing to me if I am still ripping employees off of their productivity, or if that "walkable society" is not accessible to disabled people, who do not exist in this ideal world.

We are not free until we are all free. I will scrutinize the dreams that escapist fantasies sell to me, too, because I do not want to fantasize about "ideals" that I would not actually want to fight for.

This holds true for all escapism, not only "cozy games".

Someone pointing out that one's escapism still espouses fascist themes does not have anything to do with saying that they cannot escape. For myself, as I wrote in KILL COZY GAMES, I want escapism to allow me to actually escape the grimness of the world for two seconds by imagining worlds that we could actually strive for, such as worlds where fascist values of profit accumulation do not exist.

13. "There is a difference between escaping, and calming your nervous system."

Yes, I agree.

14. "Let’s talk about triggers, content warnings, and PTSD. I have PTSD, a stalker broke into my apartment 10+ years ago. This intensified a previously undiagnosed anxiety disorder where I vomit when anxious. As you can imagine, I can not be a very good activist while vomiting. For the first couple years, I did have to be in a little cocoon of padded edges. It didn’t even take a trigger to have a panic attack, an added trigger would take out my week. This did not mean “I buried my head in the sand” for the rest of my life. I went to therapy, I got on meds. Gradually I took off a lot of the safety railing in my life. I was thankful for content warnings about stalking and knives. I watched Colossal without knowing it has an abusive left turn halfway through and had an immense panic attack. I knew Ex Machina was a horror movie, so I prepared a day where I was emotionally strong to watch it, and prepared myself for it. Contrary to popular belief, These safety railings of cozy content and content warnings are generally not used to placate a person indefinitely. They’re used intermittently and gradually. Exposure therapy is a real thing, you need to safely expose yourself to fears, or else they continue to get worse. But that is a VERY SPECIFIC method that does NOT involve being jump scared by your trauma at any moment."

Firstly, thank you for sharing. I concur with your thoughts about safety railings and content warnings. I love content warnings. Even if a person used them indefinitely, I would support them.

That said, I have not personally seen a single jam manifesto which has railed against safety railings and content warnings. Could you point me to them, if you have seen them? Certainly rightwingers and such complain about them, but I do not think that this manifesto is talking about those critiques. Those critiques come from an entirely different place than the critiques in the manifestos published in this jam.

15. "Fascist themes: I assume this primarily comes from the simulator genre of cozy."

Firstly, oops, I already talked about fascist themes earlier unintentionally. My bad. My thoughts from there still stand here.

I agree wholly with this sentiment. I will not see all the endings. I appreciate when games which value agency allow me to play one ending and leave without having to get all the endings for the One True Ending or whatever, unless those games have a linear structure of endings (thus, a linear story with multiple 'fake' endings) or the games make it seamless/painless to experience all endings once I have done so the first time.

Thank you for writing and for sharing with us!

Thank you. I did not mean to intend for you to answer me. I merely wanted to present some additional disjointed thoughts that arose within me as I read this excellent work. Still, thank you for your expanded thoughts.

I agree that the end result of always having ten potions does not make much of a difference at all, nor can one only change one aspect. I will continue to think about how to implement such in my own projects, and I look forward to yours.

I could not agree more. Thank you. I will make more ugly women in my games and stories.

I agree so much. Exquisitely written and so true. I want more games about the mundane.

Thank you for reading!

I will continue to make art that celebrates the platonic. I will continue to make art that shows both people who do not experience romantic (and/or sexual) love and also value platonic love, as well as people who do experience romantic (and/or sexual) love and also value platonic love. I want to show that platonic love is not merely a substitute for those who cannot access romantic love, but something so good and wonderful that even those who can experience powerful romantic love may choose to value platonic value equally or above it. I hope to see your art too.

Thank you for writing this. I am turning it over. I wonder how we can teach this to players, aside from devising systems which incentivize using items, such as by the use of temporary use-it-or-lose-it items , or by the capacity to transform items into other  benefits in a timely fashion. Some games, such as the oft-lauded "inventory Tetris", do teach players to think of inventory as a skill. Aside from including puzzle mechanics such as that which can make the player feel challenged rather than restricted, I think that, inevitably, asking players to fight against arbitrary limits will produce negative frustration.

Envision an inventory system where one can collect infinite amounts of items in safe chests but only carry a limited quantity or weight with them. Players tend to like these better. Restricting inventory often simply leads to players ignoring vast aspects of gameplay entirely because they do not want to carry items with limited uses. Even in a game such as Sekiro (in which one can grind infinite spirit emblems and can only carry a small amount), many players opt to not use their spirit emblems at all due to a concern of eventually running out, while a renewable resource such as Estus flasks in Dark Souls (in which the flasks refill endlessly at any safe zone, with no grinding required) does not lend itself to low usage.

I see players hoarding items they will never use or touch. I would like to think of ways to incentivize players using items and actually engaging with all game systems.

Thank you for articulating these things. I believe that not only do I want "serious/hard/complex" farming games to exist, but I also want so-called "cozy" games about actual farming or about gardening to exist. I do want games where people starve, and I also want games where people do not starve but where Number Go Up is not the point and where players learn about sustainable (largely Indigenous) farming practices and/or forest farming.

I appreciate the many specific points you bring up. I hadn't even known those points about Harvest Moon.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin includes some of the complexity you mentioned, but also propagates other fascist ideas. It taught me a lot about rice farming.

I dislike the apparent dichotomy that many (not you) propagate between Cozy Fascist Game and Bleak Leftist Game. Bleak games can espouse fascist values, and cozy games can espouse leftist values. Many games espouse various combinations of both!

I adore the concept of needing to think about community nutrition for macro- and micronutrients. The thought that someone could play a game and gain inspiration for even greens to grow on a windowsill, or for future community garden planning, or future agroforestry, sounds incredible. Thank you so much for putting brainworms in my head and ideas for my own future game.

One stick is easily broken. One bundle of sticks is less easily so. The more one expands one's scope, the stronger one can be both individually and collectively. So-called "independent" people simply rely on others' labor either through coercion or through mutual aid networks which, when sufficiently expansive and enmeshed, allow one person to meet their needs through many small favours instead of a few big ones. Yet these many small favours give more help overall.

Even the mythical American hermits who retired to "unspoiled nature" (genocided of humans) to write poetry and philosophy relied on the labour of "servant"-class people or "wife"-class people, rendered invisible. They were not truly alone or independent. They only viewed themselves as such because they did not perceive these others as human people worthy of such regard.

Unionise. Unionise. Unionise, now! Right now! Even if you are the first to make it! Unionise!

I cannot cosign this enough. Thank you for articulating this in such an insightful way. Even though I believe that I experience romantic (and sexual) love, I personally value my platonic love and most important platonic relationship far above any romantic or sexual ones. Even some people who experience romantic love still prefer or choose to value platonic love. I want more platonic options which are not lesser or inferior to their romantic equivalents, or perhaps even better.

Thank you for reading and for your kindness. I loved reading the article and agree with its analysis, especially its suggestions for improvement. Marvelous!