{"id":19413,"date":"2025-07-10T10:37:37","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T08:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/10\/cosy-video-games-are-on-an-unstoppable-rise-will-they-unleash-a-darker-side\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T10:37:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T08:37:37","slug":"cosy-video-games-are-on-an-unstoppable-rise-will-they-unleash-a-darker-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/10\/cosy-video-games-are-on-an-unstoppable-rise-will-they-unleash-a-darker-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosy video games are on an unstoppable rise. Will they unleash a darker side?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Non-violent games about cooking, farming or tidying now rival the more traditional video game pursuits of shooting and fighting in popularity. So what will the #cozy genre tackle next?<\/p>\n

In 2017, a game design thinktank called Project Horseshoe gathered a group of developers together to define the concept of cosiness in video games. Games, of course, have had non-violent elements since the medium was invented. Early life simulators such as 1985\u2019s Little Computer People, a low-stakes game in which the player interacts with a man living his unremarkable life in a house, could fit the bill; then there was the proliferation of social farming simulations after 1996\u2019s chibi-adorable Harvest Moon.<\/p>\n

But the resulting report, Coziness in Games: An Exploration of Safety, Softness, and Satisfied Needs<\/a>, is probably the first organised effort to define a then-emerging genre. The group zeroed in on three core things: safety, abundance, and softness. Cosy games (cozy in US spelling) don\u2019t have high-risk scenarios: \u201cThere is no impending loss of threat,\u201d they wrote. They must have a sense of abundance: \u201cNothing is lacking, pressing or imminent.\u201d And a soft aesthetic wraps everything up like a warm hug.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nNon-violent games about cooking, farming or tidying now rival the more traditional video game pursuits of shooting and fighting in popularity. So what will the #cozy genre tackle next?
\nIn 2017, a game design thinktank called Project Horseshoe gathered a group of developers together to define the concept of cosiness in video games. Games, of course, have had non-violent elements since the medium was invented. Early life simulators such as 1985\u2019s Little Computer People, a low-stakes game in which the player interacts with a man living his unremarkable life in a house, could fit the bill; then there was the proliferation of social farming simulations after 1996\u2019s chibi-adorable Harvest Moon.
\nBut the resulting report, Coziness in Games: An Exploration of Safety, Softness, and Satisfied Needs, is probably the first organised effort to define a then-emerging genre. The group zeroed in on three core things: safety, abundance, and softness. Cosy games (cozy in US spelling) don\u2019t have high-risk scenarios: \u201cThere is no impending loss of threat,\u201d they wrote. They must have a sense of abundance: \u201cNothing is lacking, pressing or imminent.\u201d And a soft aesthetic wraps everything up like a warm hug. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Non-violent games about cooking, farming or tidying now rival the more traditional video game pursuits of shooting and fighting in popularity. So what will the #cozy genre tackle next? In 2017, a game design thinktank called Project Horseshoe gathered a group of developers together to define the concept of cosiness in video games. Games, of …<\/p>\n

Cosy video games are on an unstoppable rise. Will they unleash a darker side?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}