nasty “cozy gamers”
I’ve played a lot of games that get slapped with the “cozy” tag - the big ones like Stardew Valley, Coral Island, Palia, Sims, ACNH, HKIA, Fields of Mistria, Cozy Grove, House Flipper, as well as smaller gems like Coffee Talk, Kind Words, Gourdlets, Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Sticky Business, Until Then, all kinds of low stakes simulators and more.
When I meet people in real life that have also enjoyed some of these, we tend to get along well. Online, however, I feel like the communities of such games have been completely poisoned. I wrote previously about how toxic fandom can be online, but I think specifically “cozy gaming” spaces have a lot to reckon with in that regard.
It’s odd, because I feel like cozy gaming initially drew pretty great people together 2014 and onward. To me, it was basically an antidote to how the rest of gaming often was, which was very focused on performance, wins, losses, bragging about difficulty levels and boss fights. Everything had to be as hard as possible, you had to optimize and dominate the opponent(s).
Which, to be clear, I am not completely opposed to - I used to train my aim on websites and software to improve, and I used to write guides and create graphics for competitive Overwatch, specifically on how to play Sombra most efficiently, which were shown and referenced in videos on YouTube as well. I was as detailed and committed as I am now with data protection law. Don’t ask me now, I stopped playing since they shut off OW1, but the point is I can, but I have to be in the mood for it. And sometimes, it was pretty great to just have a chill game you could optimize to a degree if you wanted to (Stardew Valley!) but that didn’t rush you or get on your nerves about taking longer.
That attracted many cis and trans women as well as people with other marginalized identities who felt unwelcome in other, more harsh (and often sexist, homophobic and transphobic) gaming spaces, disabled and chronically ill people, people who were struggling with depression and anxiety, and people juggling many different responsibilities that left them with very little time, especially not consistently. Many games punish that as they are hard to get back into and your performance suffers, causing a lot of frustration and lots of unfinished, abandoned games in the library. Many of the “cozy” games were much easier to pick back up again and did not punish you for being worse after a break.
That tended to create an overall space with a lot of understanding, grace, positivity, help and openness to discuss struggle and made people feel less alone. Lots of shared values in how to treat each other, protecting the marginalized, fighting for more accessibility in games, calling out harmful narratives and mechanics.
Nowadays though, I find that the spaces are filled with very loud, disrespectful voices drowning out the rest. They seem to use the things I pointed out as a shield and to lie to themselves about how rude they’re really being - like they can’t possibly be acting like a bad person, because they’re engaging in the People Who Are Nice space, or because the have this or that diagnosis.
Obviously, no community can be perfect, and something could be said about the possible powder keg you’re building when you put people in a shared space that are traumatized, in pain, socially awkward/unaware, and in survival mode. That this creates, at times, very unhinged situations makes sense. However, the entitlement and picky behavior is off the charts since 2 years, in my opinion.
Some highlights off the top of my head:
People playing the new content update for the game for x hours straight with no breaks, finishing quickly, then are mad that it was “so short”. They don’t see any reason why it was their own fault for not pacing themselves to a reasonable degree.
People skipping ahead via cheats and in-game time traveling, then being mad that they have nothing to play and have seen it all already when it officially releases for everyone. They ruined their own fun, but of course, it is somehow the dev’s fault for not releasing enough content!
People buy a game where time traveling is forbidden, being warned about the consequences with a popup, and then being mad that because they did it anyway, the file is corrupted forever. Fuck around and find out!
They request a replacement game file from the dev so they don’t have to start over from scratch. The dev gives the closest game file they have. Player is mad at the dev for not having a save file that has all the collectibles their old file had. Made them wanna “stop playing forever”.
The in-game event goes on for a month, and gives you extra resources so you don’t have to grind daily to get everything from the event. People: “Uhm, what if I don’t have time in that month? Does that mean I will just miss out on these items? That’s so unfair.” In their view, they should just be given anything at all times, everything is already unlocked, no working for anything. Game over, I guess!
People buy a game that expects you to log in daily. Then they are mad that daily logins are rewarded with optional stuff. “What about us people who forget to log in? It’s unfair and puts pressure on me.” Can’t even expect people to press a button anymore to get a reward and then close the game again after 10 seconds. Alarms and reminders don’t exist for these people. But also, it’s a fucking game! You will survive without optional daily rewars green dress.
Similarly, they buy a game meant to be played here and there for 1-2 hours a day, then are mad they cannot grind through the entire story in a day. “But I have no time to sit down except for like a day every 3 months and then I wanna play for 10 hours straight!!” Okay, then maybe this isn’t the game for you?
New content update; things run smoothly, but: There is a typo in 2 dialogue options. Assessment of the
professional victimsplayers: “The game quality is really going downhill. This is barely playable. They should fire their entire Q&A team.”Game in which you are timegated, so you have some stuff to play for the entire year, and slowly unlock things over time, so things stay fresh and you have something to work towards. “Oh my god, I’m gonna have to wait 5 months to unlock this?” “Oh my god, I cannot get event items outside of events?” “Oh my god, this character only shows up in a specific season?”
“Since it would take me effort to 100% the game, it’s unfair and I am burnt out from it because I hold myself to the standard of always getting everything. Still, me forcing arbitrary rules on myself and getting sick of the game is somehow the devs fault. The game is bad.”
People buy a game where the point is to cook or craft, then say “Why do I have to cook and craft all the time? So boring.”
Bugfix is underway, dev already did everything and submitted it, but platform owner delays approval by weeks or months. Players think this is the fault of the devs too. They should be up on weekends harassing Nintendo employees to approve more quickly so cozy gamer Rosanna can finally stop throwing a fit online and complete the wholesome quest about characters helping each other.
“30 dollars for a DLC with new characters, new furniture, new clothing, new map, new quests, new items, new minigames, new game mechanics, new resources with about as much playtime as a 70 dollar single player game? Too expensive. They are greedy.”
Optional new cosmetics to consistently fund the game or else be shut down? Greed, of course.
Players calling DLCs costing money “microtransactions”. There are no microtransactions in the game. They get told what microtransactions are and why DLCs don’t fall under it. They accuse the explainer of “definition-lawyering”. This dumbass shit even gets upvotes and awards.
Community Manager is a woman. Need I say more? She is the devil, she is a liar, she is the reason the game is going downhill, she needs to be fired! It’s amazing to see so many socially anxious, unable-to-work people be so hellbent on judging people’s work that work harder than they could.
“This character is mildly ugly. I’m boycotting the game.”
The cozy gamers who are the loudest online are cruel, inconsiderate, stubborn, unable to learn or consistently work on anything. They cannot bear to take responsibility for their behavior and have absolutely zero patience or frustration resilience. There is no empathizing with people, and they are seemingly completely opposed to fair pay of employees that create their entertainment. It’s really rich coming from the aforementioned demographics, but unfortunately, there are assholes everywhere.
In my experience with all the games so far, dipping in and out of communities, I have to unfortunately say that the Hello Kitty Island Adventure community is the worst of all I ever seen. Absolutely full of completely miserable people who wanna make others miserable and punish the devs for their own shortcomings.
These people will play games about how important it is to be nice and take nothing away from it. There is nothing going on in their head besides how to make something a problem, and 6468 reasons for why they aren’t at fault, and they should get anything for free.
For the best enjoyment of these games, just do not descend into these pits of hell 😅
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