Cozy Games Genre and Misogyny: In-Depth Fact Check 2024

Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. I'm just playing a cozy game on my Nintendo Switch 2 system. Cozy games are kind of

paradoxical in nature. Over the last few years, the market has been absolutely flooded with wholesome indie titles

about farming, decorating, and befriending cute talking animals. Some of the biggest games in the world right

now are cozy games. Hokko Life sold over 2.2 million copies in its first 4 days alone, and physical copies of Tomodachi

Life sold out pretty much everywhere on release for good reason. And yet, despite the genre's popularity, cozy

games are not real games, at least according to a surprisingly large contingent of gamers. Cozy games are

soft, shallow, boring, weak. They're casual. They require no skill or real time investment to get good. They're

oversaturated and overhyped. They just aren't real games. Why, despite their immense popularity, are cozy games so

often dismissed in this way? Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that a large audience of women enjoy them.

Today, I want to explore how misogyny has shaped the cozy game genre and community, and why so often these

wholesome cozy games are anything but. Before we continue, I just want to take a quick minute to thank the sponsors of

today's video, Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform for creators to stand out and succeed

online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful

website and engage with your audience. With Squarespace's intuitive drag-and-drop editing, beautiful styling

options, tons of visual design effects, and a whole library of templates, literally anyone can build an epic

custom website to fit their needs. Not only can you sell products, but Squarespace makes it easy to offer

services and get paid all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences, you can attract clients and

grow your business with Squarespace. And for that extra professional little touch, Squarespace domains is a great

way of giving your site a unique name. Every Squarespace domain comes with advanced privacy and security tools

included to ensure that your domain remains online and protected. And Squarespace provides everything you need

to bring more of your dream to life, whether that means building a website or adding a professional email service. Go

to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/izzys

to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. A huge thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video,

and now let's continue. The term cozy to describe a specific genre of game is relatively new,

emerging around 2020 during the pandemic when coincidentally a lot of people were inside and looking for a way to escape

reality. For many, this escape came in the form of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, whose release coincided

perfectly with the whole global lockdown thing. Animal Crossing had always been a popular franchise, but they really

caught lightning in a bottle with New Horizons. It wasn't just a big game that happened to come out during a time when

we everyone was inside. There was something about it, a certain magic that captivated players, transported them to

a peaceful world of fruit trees and flowers and cute talking animals. The mechanics were relaxing and bordered on

mindful at times. Fishing, digging up fossils, and completing museum collections, tending flowers, slowly

decorating the island. It was slow, it was gentle, and it was cozy. Around the same time that Animal Crossing released,

a small team of indie developers put together the first Wholesome Direct, which showcased range of {quote}

wholesome indie games. Games that had an intangible warmth and comfort and well, wholesomeness to them. {quote} We

noticed there were a bunch of indie games in development with a similar vibe, and lots of the same people were

in communities for all of them, but no one knew how to define that vibe. We heard cozy, Nintendo-inspired,

non-violent, etc., but there were always exceptions. We called them wholesome games to highlight that it's not a

single quality like cuteness or non-violence that ties them together. Wholesome Direct was a huge success

becoming a well-respected name in the indie game space, which helped to cement cozy games as their own genre. While

wholesome was and still is sometimes used to describe these same intangible warm cozy feelings, cozy became the word

of choice. >> think we'll ever know why exactly one was chosen over the other, but honestly

it might have had something to do with the whole E3 [music] Keanu Reeves wholesome 100 Chungus Reddit moment

thing. It sounds like I'm doing a bit of the word wholesome became kind of tainted after that. People still goof on

you for saying it. >> Cozy games surged in popularity during the pandemic. Stardew Valley with its

repetitive yet satisfying farming gameplay and rustic countryside setting, Ooblets with its cute blobby art style

and adorable critters, My Time at Portia with its community of colorful characters and vast open fields to

explore, Spiritfarer, Cozy Grove, Slime Rancher, The Sims, the list goes on. >> For many players, these games provided a

much-needed escape from the reality of living in a capitalist dystopia. >> They featured slow mindful mechanics,

fishing, gardening, foraging, cooking, exploring. They immersed players in beautiful colorful worlds filled with

nature and populated with cute quirky characters to befriend and even romance. They imagined a world where nature was

treated with respect, smartphones hadn't completely eroded the concept of community, and you could actually own a

house and not be in debt. Unless you were playing Animal Crossing, in which case you were in debt just to Tom Nook

instead of like a landlord. >> called these games tapped into a shared longing for three things: connection,

community, and the ability to slow down and take life at your own pace. Before we continue, we should probably talk

about the definition or lack thereof of cozy. >> What do you define as a cozy game? So,

I'm curious. What exactly is the definition of a cozy game? What is your definition of cozy games? What games,

for example? Hit me out. Hot take. Does anyone think that people are conflating cozy with I'm simply enjoying this game?

What is a cozy game? I don't even really see a consistent definition of what a cozy game actually is. So, I don't know

if I can consider myself to be a cozy gamer. As you can probably tell, there's a lot of confusion in the space about

what the genre even is, and pretty much everyone has a different answer. For some, cozy games need to fit a specific

list of criteria. Non-competitive, non-violent, repetitive [music] gameplay, cute graphics, relaxing music,

uplifting, comforting stories, an emphasis on stress relief, and a escapism. Cozy game fans in this camp

generally acknowledge that not every game is going to tick every single box. There'll always be exceptions like

Stardew Valley's mining combat or Spiritfarer's cute but dark subject matter. But, there are rough guidelines

that can help to define certain games as cozy. Others define cozy games purely based on vibes alone, describing them as

the kind of game you just want to curl up by the fire and play on a rainy day. These players often take a more I just

know it when I see it approach to defining cozy games, and therefore end up including unconventional picks like

Bloodborne, Skyrim, and Dredge. Just because for those people, those games do feel cozy and relaxing. Naturally, these

two different camps butt heads a lot. Cozy gamers who prefer more strict definitions argue that there's a

distinction between cozy and comforting. Any game from Halo to Bloodborne to Silent Hill can be a comfort game, but

those same games due to their violence, intense combat, or horror themes can't be considered part of the cozy game

genre. Those who gauge coziness by vibes argue that cozy is such a broad genre that it's impossible to define with a

checklist of mechanics, and that the definition shouldn't be policed. If they find it cozy, it's cozy, god damn it.

Basically, cozy is a very loosely defined, vague umbrella of mechanics, aesthetics, and general vibes that

basically no one can agree on. For the purpose of this video, I'll be using cozy to describe the more typical kind

of relaxing simulator genre rather than like Bloodborne. Cozy quickly grew from a niche term used by a small corner of

the indie game community to a multi-million dollar video game genre. Suddenly, games that had been around for

years, even decades, as life simulators, RPGs, and even adventure games were retroactively being tagged as cozy

games. Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing were hailed as the proto-cozy games, the grandfathers of the modern cozy

movement. The Sims was declared to have been the ultimate cozy game all along, and Stardew Valley was credited with

kicking off the modern cozy farming game trend all the way back in 2016. And the genre is only getting bigger. In 2020,

19 games released with the tag cozy on Steam, and in 2025, there were over 600. There are so many of these games coming

out every year. Infinity Nikki, Potion Permit, Palia, Hokko Life, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Disney

Dreamlight Valley, Cozy Caravan, Fields of Mistria, A Tiny Bookshop, Coral Island, Paleo

Pines, Dinkum, Everdream Bookshop, Wildflowers, Tales of the Shire, Calico, Strange Horticulture, Kitaria Fables,

Potion Permit, and so so many more. Too many to list. The r/cozygaming subreddit has over 350,000

members, and there are countless YouTubers, streamers, and influencers who have made entire careers based off

of playing and discussing cozy games. At this point, you may be asking, "Well, if the genre is so popular and beloved by

gamers, what's the issue here?" And the issue is that despite their popularity and relevancy in the current zeitgeist,

cozy games and those who play them are very often subject to mockery, denigration, and dismissal.

As a kid, I was a huge nerd, and I loved video games. And whenever I tried to talk to my male classmates about them, I

was almost always met with the same response. "Okay, name five games then, and they can't be like Nintendogs or The

The or Animal Crossing." From a young age, I learned two things. Firstly, that because I was a girl, I was naturally

suspected to be lying about my interest in video games and had to prove my knowledge. And secondly, that the games

that I loved and that shaped my childhood were not real games. So, over time I learned to replace The Sims,

Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, Pets, Cats 2, and Bratz with other cooler games that I played. Games that were socially

acceptable. Skyrim, Borderlands, Garry's Mod, Fallout, Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition TM. These were the

types of games that elicited positive reactions from my peers, rather than whoever I was talking to just

straight-up leaving the conversation. I'm far from the only one to experience this. I asked in a poll on my Instagram

if any of my followers had experienced mockery or dismissal for playing cozy or casual games, and the responses were

pretty striking. "Oh my god, of course you only like Life is Strange" with an eye roll when I said it was my favorite

video game. "Have you played any real games?" is a consistent response. When I worked in games, there really was a

culture of real games versus those made for girls. I play 15 hours a week of Minecraft, Stardew, DotA, Life, etc. and

friends say I don't play real games. Had an ex that didn't even play games rip on me for playing The Sims. In general, I

always got some guff for playing Nintendo games and not Call of Duty. That's not a real game though. Okay,

little bro. God forbid I want to relax. So, what separates cozy games from so-called real games? Well, there are a

lot of factors at play, but in online discussions, it usually tends to boil down to one thing: difficulty. Real

games demand skill and punish failure. They require intelligence, quick thinking, fast reflexes, and or complex

knowledge of in-game systems. Games like Dark Souls and Hollow Knight are infamously unforgiving and not only

require skill, but a huge amount of patience and perseverance even when you've entered that tiny arena for the

15th time and the dog's already on you and your stun locks so you can't [ __ ] hit the capra demon. I can't wait to do

the run all the way back here with the dogs and the assassins. Call of Duty, CS: GO, and other multiplayer shooters

require quick reflexes and pinpoint precision with the added pressure of playing as part of a team who are

probably not going to be very happy if you lose. On the other hand, common criticisms of

the cozy genre include a lack of challenge, low stakes, relaxing gameplay, and repetitive gameplay loops

of farming or grinding NPC quests. Cozy games often have a very low barrier of entry and are accessible even to

non-gamers. Progress is often dictated more by the player and what they want to do rather than a strict set of

objectives, levels, or boss battles. In a word, cozy games are generally not as interested in the idea of difficulty or

challenge, and in this way, for some gamers, they kind of represent the antithesis of what a video game should

be. And yet, strangely, when you break them down to their core components, their most basic mechanics, cozy games

actually share a ton of similarities with action games, shooters, platformers, survival games, and more.

Resource gathering can be hitting apple trees and rocks in Animal Crossing or harvesting herbs and mining ore in World

of Warcraft. One is framed as a relaxing daily routine, while the other is efficient grinding. Game upgrades and

progression might look like gradually unlocking items to decorate your world in Pokopia or gradually unlocking a

skill tree in Skyrim. Optimization and min-maxing might look like fine-tuning your farm layout, crop spread, and

overall profit per season in Stardew Valley, or it could look like optimizing your stats, armor, and overall build in

Elden Ring. Time management, base building, crafting, socialization, exploration, mastery of in-game

mechanics and systems, these are all features present in cozy games as well as a wide variety of other genres.

During my research for this video, I reached out to Belle, a game developer who previously worked as a teacher in

the field. She shared her own experiences with and research into misogyny in the cozy game space, and one

particularly interesting point that she brought up was the very real existence of male cozy games. Games that share

almost identical mechanics with popular cozy games, but are aimed at a predominantly male audience and tend to

face far less scrutiny. To quote Bell, "I'll use two examples here, Animal Crossing and Fallout Shelter. Two very

different games, right? Not exactly. When you break the mechanics down to their core, they are essentially using

graphics, names, and phrasing to change the way they are perceived. Let's say in Animal Crossing I enjoy growing my

island new villagers. I maintain the island, find out what is bothering the others, fix it, gather supplies, and

keep up maintenance. That is the exact same process as maintaining your shelter in Fallout. The mechanics are identical,

base building, NPC morale, maintenance to ensure safety and happiness, and the player is the one in charge. Like a baby

onesie, the only difference in its reception is if they make it pink or blue. Another great example is the truck

simulator genre. As someone who has played a surprising amount of American Truck Simulator, these games are

incredibly relaxing. With beautiful scenery, background music, and long open roads that allow you to kind of turn

your brain off and enjoy the tranquility of driving a big old truck. This game has tens of thousands of positive

reviews. Most of them are about how relaxing it is to finish a long day at work, crack open a beer, and just play

while you unwind from the day. This is the exact same sentiment shared by so many cozy game players. So, why do we

see so much dismissal and judgment directed specifically at cozy games? Historically, we have seen time and time

again that hobbies and interests enjoyed by largely female audiences are minimized, mocked, and made into jokes.

Think about all the hatred towards Justin Bieber, One Direction, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, even basic

concepts like wearing Ugg boots, shopping, K-pop, drinking pumpkin spice lattes, and reading romance novels.

These are all things that have been turned into running jokes and memes officially dubbed cringe, corny, silly.

The one thing they all share in common, they're targeted towards and or enjoyed by a predominantly female audience.

According to my career search from 2025, studies indicate that over 60% of cozy game players are women and anecdotally

women make up a very large proportion of online cozy communities, cozy game YouTube channels and cozy game streams.

Cozy games just feel like the latest interest to be belittled and mocked because women enjoy them. This is a

cycle that we've seen repeating in the gaming space for years. Since the very beginning, games have always been

largely marketed towards and created by men as STEM subjects were more socially accepted for men to go into. In the

'60s, '70s and '80s, we actually saw the number of female computer science majors increase quite dramatically with iconic

female developers like Donna Bailey, Carol Shaw and Roberta Williams helping to pioneer video games as we know them

today. Though the number of women in comp sci was increasing, it was still an uphill especially in the games industry.

Things got worse in the 2000s. Video game companies decided that they didn't want to market towards weenies and video

game nerds anymore. They wanted to broaden their demographic and in order to do that, they needed to make video

games cool. This is when we saw a huge marketing push from companies like PlayStation and Xbox to make video games

gritty and edgy and sexy. I'm sure you guys have seen a bunch of these iconic ads from around the time. This marketing

push coincided with the surging popularity of games like Call of Duty, Halo and GTA and this resulted in a

gaming culture that was not only marketed towards males but very hyper masculinized. Guns and skating and

fighting and bobbies. Coincidentally, the number of female computer science graduate took a huge dive around this

time. Girls did get some games though mostly in the form of pink sparkly shovelware. Lovely Lisa, the Imagine Pet

Care series, the Petz series, Style Savvy, Action Girls Racing, Girls Zone which is genuinely one of the worst

games I've ever played. Yes, I own a physical copy of this for some reason. Tons of games based on IPs like Monster

High, Littlest Pet Shop, Zhu Zhu Pets, La La Loopsy, Holly Hobby, The Cheetah Girls, and more. And all of those

Ubisoft Imagine games that were actually Japanese and looked like this until they were given these super horrible English

covers. Most games for girls revolved around fashion and makeup, horses, or taking care of babies. These {quote}

unquote girly games became the socially acceptable way for girls to dabble in gaming. Yes, the games were terrible

shovelware slop, and yes, girls were still mocked for playing them, but this girly game space wasn't as openly

hostile as the mainstream gaming space. In the 2010s, as mobile gaming rose to prominence, the girly gamer became the

casual gamer. Games like Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Bejeweled, Peggle, and Diner Dash rose to the top, while

Facebook games with social aspects like FarmVille also found huge success. These games were simple, addictive, and

marketed towards a wider casual audience designed to be played in short bursts throughout the day for those who had

busy schedules. The barrier to entry was low, with no expensive consoles or prior knowledge of video games needed. And

most importantly, these games weren't just targeted towards men. They were for anyone, and they ended up proving

especially popular with women. There's a reason that games like Angry Birds, Peggle, and FarmVille are considered mom

games. And once again, as women began to openly enjoy these games, they became the subject of mockery and meaning.

Mobile games weren't real games, and those who played them were casual gamers, not considered to be at the same

level as their hardcore console gaming counterparts. Much like the girly games of the 2000s, casual mobile games became

an acceptable way for women to game. They were able to be put in this casual game box and shoved to the side, always

kept outside the margins of the real gaming community, while just in enough to be regularly mocked for the types of

games that they played. In this way, cozy games kind of feel like the latest repackaging of the girly game or the

casual game. And this isn't to say that cozy games have all of the same issues that girly games or casual games did. In

fact, I think that we've come a long way. The cozy game community genuinely feels like the first time that women and

queer people have had a dedicated space carved out in the games community, one where they can discuss and debate games

they like and feel safe from harassment and abuse. Unlike girly games and casual games, certain cozy games like Stardew

Valley and New Horizons have garnered a lot of respect in the gaming space for their innovation and influence. You

definitely couldn't say the same for Imagine Ice Skating or Farmville. But there's still a long way to go and

despite their popularity among both men and women, cozy games are still often seen as the default type of game that a

woman should play and the cozy game space is where she should be. During my conversation with Belle, she showed me a

Steam thread that she found called why do females like this game? The game in question is Stardew Valley and in the

thread users speculate about why girls seem to like slow relaxed games rather than shooters. In response to a user

suggesting that women are less likely to play multiplayer action or FPS games due to a combination of historically male

marketing and general toxicity in the community, another user calls this blatant lies and misogyny. They go on to

say, "quote females tend to be more interested in casual laid-back games. It's the reason why games like Animal

Crossing, The Sims, etc. all have relatively large female player bases. It just comes down to nature." Another user

replies, "quote females tend to be less competitive than males when it comes to gaming. There is no way to argue about

it because studies have proven so. Just Google it." Competitive games usually have a more aggressive community and

need a lot more time investment. I'm not saying girls can't play competitive games, I'm saying that most of them are

not good at it. This belief that women are naturally disinterested in or even naturally worse at playing fast-paced,

violent, or challenging games is pervasive and part of the reason why the cozy game community has been accepted as

this de facto space for female gamers. And this can feel troublesome, especially when you consider how

domestic many cozy games are. Gardening, cooking, cleaning, decorating a home, buying outfits and dressing up. These

are all things stereotypically associated with women and our society, and they're also the core mechanics of

many cozy games. Reddit user Ishtarian writes, quote, I love that we get a space that has a large amount of women

in it, but I hate that this feels like the only space we're allowed to be in. Even in virtual worlds, we are only

allowed out in the kitchen, essentially. Of course, to hell with that standard and play whatever you want, but it would

be nice to be recognized and catered to in other genres, too. User Lemons replies, it's games for girls all over

again. We've already been seeing misogynistic gamer bros crying about cozy games not being real video games

for years now. On one hand, it's great that we have a space in the gaming world. On the other hand, if it only

serves to segregate us and legitimize games from that space, then this space is not worth much. We need to be

recognized as an equal target demographic within all game or genre communities, otherwise we'll only be

excluded to isolated girl game spaces. There's nothing inherently bad about slow-paced relaxing games where you cook

or decorate a house or dress up and play with cute little critters. The problem arises when these games are naturally

assumed to be the only type of game that women are interested in. It's not just players facing these attitudes from the

community. During my research, I got in contact with Gabby Darienzo, the developer behind A Mortician's Tale and

Season of the Witch Cemetery. My day job is I work as a like an artist for indie games. Um

and I've gotten to work on a lot of pretty cool games like Celeste, which is like a pretty big one. And uh while I

was working, like kind of freelancing doing that, I also was like, oh, I want to make my own games. And so, that's how

I ended up developing Mortician's Tale. I have a full-time job now in games as an artist at a studio here in Toronto,

but yeah, on the side I still make like little little small games. And the personal games I make are like pretty

cozy or cozy-adjacent. I have kind of always been interested in the death industry. That sounds so goth, but like

I have >> [laughter] >> I have a few friends that are or like

were funeral directors, and just like hearing them talk about their their jobs is just so fascinating. That was That's

where like Mortician's Tale came from was just like this idea of making a game about this. But also, I really love

walking sims or games with like cozier mechanics. I'm trying not to overuse the word cozy in our conversation, but

>> [laughter] >> but like like a like a gentle look at this thing that is very, you know, sad

and upsetting that a lot of people don't have have knowledge about. And so, yeah, wanting to make a game about the subject

matter and wanting to do it with like the respect it deserves kind of turned it into this cozy experience. Gabby

shared her experiences having her games dismissed by members of the community, including one particularly unsettling

incident. When Mortician's Tale came out Yeah, it was really surprising the amount of people who played the game,

who really resonated with the game, uh who liked the game. We got a fair amount of press talking about the game, um very

positively. I remember like there was a like a um a Reddit like a subreddit thread that was like, "Oh, why is this

game getting all these like positive press articles? Like why is it making like why is it getting all these good

reviews? I don't get it. It's like barely a game. Um the developers must have been sleeping

with the with the press to get these reviews." And there's like a whole thing where they were accusing me and like

some people on my team were also like women or non-binary of like, "Oh, the only possible way this game could have

gotten a good reviews is from you guys sleeping with the press." Luckily, it didn't blow up very much. And so, like

you know, we had a conversation um where it was like, "Okay, everybody lock down your accounts. Like make sure your

two factors are on. La la la." but like it didn't really blow up in the same way that like Gamergate blew up, thank god.

So, we're very, very fortunate, but just like yeah, it was very interesting to see the negative reviews be so hateful

because of I don't know, the game being like a little different. Like it not like I like I quote-unquote not a real

game was the reason why they hated it so much. It was like very, very fascinating.

This occurred a few years after Gamergate and shared some striking similarities. Two feminine-presenting

developers who created an unconventional indie game that didn't fit inside a box received positive reviews and were

subsequently accused of sleeping with the press to earn those reviews. For those of you who aren't familiar with

Gamergate because to be fair it happened over a decade ago now, it was a large-scale online campaign to bring

back ethics to games journalism. I don't want to get too into the weeds here, but we'll go over an abridged version

because I think it's relevant to the topic at hand. >> channel Innuendo Studios has a video

series called Angry Jack, which I can't really explain enough. He goes into a lot more detail about the movement and

how it formed. To make a long story short, the whole thing started when game developer Zoe Quinn released their 2013

interactive fiction game Depression Quest, which received positive reviews from games critics. Things quickly

spiraled out of control when Quinn's ex-boyfriend wrote a lengthy post accusing them of sleeping with a Kotaku

journalist in exchange for a favorable review of Depression Quest. A claim which was quickly proven false. The

journalist had never even written about Zoe's game. Instead, he had briefly interviewed them for an article he wrote

on Game Jam, a failed game dev reality TV show featuring JonTron, Markiplier, and Captain Sparklez that they had

featured on. As you can probably tell from that description, Game Jam is like it's whole own can of worms. It was kind

of insane. Anyway, the original post began to circulate finding a home on 4chan where it quickly morphed into a

vile misogynistic hate campaign. Many young men saw this movement as an opportunity to reclaim the gaming

community [music] which they felt had been ruined by fake gamer girls desperate for attention,

female developers, streamers, and online figures using their body or good looks for money, and triggered feminists

trying to sanitize their games and make them woke. Hostility and aggression towards female players was normalized

and even encouraged more so than it already had been, and several prominent figures in the gaming community were

doxxed and had to leave the internet for their own safety. Gamergate helped to funnel tons of young men into the modern

alt-right movement, and we're still seeing the effects of that movement over a decade later. The overwhelming message

sent by the Gamergate movement was that women are not welcome in gaming. And even though Gamergate is a thing of the

past, that sentiment is very much not. The idea of women as intruders, lappers, and posers that need to be put in their

place is still incredibly common. No, what's Saki cuz she's 300 lb. She's going to yell at her cuz she's fat. I'm

a gamer girl. I'm a gamer girl. I play video games. I'm a streamer. You're not a streamer. You're fat and gross. No

one's [ __ ] you. What it's like playing Gorilla Tag as a girl. Shut up. Make me a sandwich.

Clean the house. Go wash the dishes. Make me coffee. Make me milk. Make me anything. How the hell is that a girl in

the lobby? Shut up, you dirty [ __ ] >> [laughter] >> I'm so sorry no one loves you, but don't

take that out on me. The [ __ ] are you doing? Shut up, you dirty slag. Make him

dinner. Women are going to take over gaming. Uh-oh. What is this? A competitive

Animal Crossing game? Whoa. During the 2024 Game Awards, the few cozy games that were shown, such as One

Move Away, Tales of the Shire, and Infinity Nikki, were bombarded with comments like "Cozy games are for the

weak." "Cozy slop." "Games are supposed to be adventures, not chores." "Cozy games are mid AF." "More indie slop."

"Yay, this looks like something my mom would play on her phone. When a female content creator came on screen to

introduce Tales of the Shire, one user commented, "Gamergate was disastrous to gaming culture."

>> Misogyny in the gaming space doesn't always manifest as loud, virulent hatred. Most of the time it's subtle.

>> It's assuming a woman on your team is going to be a disadvantage. It's recommending only cozy games to a female

friend looking to get into gaming when you wouldn't do that with a male friend. It's scoffing when a girl says she plays

The Sims. It's assuming that just because a streamer is a woman that she has an OnlyFans. It's saying that cozy

games aren't real games. >> point you may be asking, "Well, there are a lot of genuine problems in the

cozy game space. Is it sexist to bring those up? Can I not criticize a genre now?" And I think that this is a valid

thing to bring up. In the last few years, as cozy games have risen in popularity, so has criticism of the

genre. From oversaturation to shovelware and cozy slop to capitalist propaganda and more. So, let's take a look at some

common criticisms leveled at the genre. One of the most prevalent criticisms of the cozy game genre is how oversaturated

it is. Go to any online storefront, whether it be the PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, Steam, Itch.io,

whatever, and you'll be bombarded with these things. Cozy games as far as the eye can see. Games where you manage a

cute little store, games where you run a farm, games where you make friends with a bunch of little critters, games with

cats and witches and gardening and pastel colors. And the problem isn't so much the concept of these games. I mean,

who doesn't love cats and pastel colors? But rather with the actual content and marketing. A large chunk of cozy games

released nowadays are very low effort, clearly rushed out in an attempt to cash in on a popular buzzword. The story and

mechanics are shallow and bare-bones. The gameplay is buggy, and it's all masked in the sort of pandering, sickly

sweet, wholesome, adorable, cozy aesthetic that just feels disingenuous. Then there are just the straight-up AI

asset flips that have cozy and wholesome slapped all over them to sell more copies. Gamers have coined the term cozy

slop to describe the metric ton of high-priced low-effort farming sims flooding the market right now and the

problem isn't getting better. In fact, it's only getting worse. It's been bad for a while, but it's getting worse now.

At this point, I just look at most cozy games and ask, "Okay, so what do you do that other games don't?" And usually the

answer is nothing, really. Take the farming sim genre, Stardew Valley but 3D, Stardew Valley but different

fishing, Stardew Valley but Long Ago, Stardew Valley but Dinos, Stardew Valley but different pixel art, revolutionary,

Stardew Valley but edgy. No hate on any of these games, but a lot of them lack substance outside of their gimmick. The

cozy game market is becoming saturated with games that get popular because they're cozy, not because they're

actually good. So many damn farming sims that are basically copies of each other and don't actually add anything unique.

Either that or they come out buggy, unfinished, or otherwise seriously lacking in content. I haven't bought a

new cozy game in ages now because I've been so disappointed by various games I bought that I thought I would like.

Anyone else feeling a sense of lack of effort resulting in what feels like playing children's games? I just feel

like I'm playing a Fisher-Price game with some of these most recent cozy titles. Where's the depth? Where's the

passion? It feels like they're being pumped out as a cash grab and sometimes I find myself wondering if this game was

meant for a 6-year-old. It's not even just the games themselves that have become oversaturated. Players have

pointed out the mass influx of AI slop articles of the best cozy games you need to play this winter or the top 10 new

cozy games you need to play. These low-effort listicles literally just list off whatever half-baked shovelware is

new on the Nintendo store because apparently Nintendo doesn't care much about that seal of quality anymore. This

isn't even to mention outright scams like the $2 Puff Pals Island Skies Kickstarter or cozy games that are

plagued with drama like Hoktopia. Cozy is now seen as a corporate buzzword to sell cheap low-quality farming sims and

this negative reputation has only gotten worse with the rise of cozy gotcha games. Gotcha mechanics where you spend

real money to pull for different randomized characters and items was originally more of a mobile game thing.

In fact, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp was sort of the proto modern gotcha cozy game releasing in 2017 and earning over

$250 million by 2021. The game featured a premium currency fortune cookie system with each fortune cookie containing one

mystery item from a complete furniture set. Francine C Cookie, Stella's sleepy cookie, Sprinkle's crystal cookie,

Felicity's kitty cookie, these were all cute aesthetic sets that looked best when all placed together and with

fortune cookies only available for a limited time, it put pressure on players to spend exorbitantly to collect the

whole set. The release of Genshin Impact in 2020 helped to more widely popularize gotcha mechanics in PC and console

games. Since then, we've seen games like Wuthering Waves, Infinity Nikki, Hoktopia, and even upcoming releases

like Animal Crossing and Petit Planet embrace the free-to-play gotcha model. Like loot boxes and microtransactions,

these mechanics can be extremely addictive and prey on players' fear of missing out, advertising characters and

sets as limited-time offers or rare seasonal events that won't come back again. The connection between gotcha,

loot box mechanics, and problem gambling, especially in kids, is very well established at this point. From a

2022 article from the Journal of Consumer Policy, quote, "Research shows that exposure to monetized games and

quasi gambling activities at an early age may constitute a gateway to disordered gambling activity. One study

of the interactions between children and loot box games observed that loot boxes shared an important structural and

psychological similarity with gambling and they 100% allow for, if not actively encourage, underage players to engage

with these systems, making loot boxes a ripe breeding ground for development of problem gambling in children. A

large-scale survey of 16-18 year olds conducted by Zendle et al. established that for this age range at least there

was some links between development of problem gambling and games containing loot boxes. During my conversation with

Gabby Darienzo, she recounted her time working in mobile games and the similarities that cozy games is starting

to share with them. I worked at that mobile studio for like a couple years. Um

didn't love it. I am not super big fan. Like when mobile games first became a thing, thinking about like Angry Birds

or I don't know, Temple Run or Subway Surfers or Cut the Rope. A lot of them were premium, so it's like, "Oh, you pay

like $2 and you get the full game. You can play it on your phone." And then companies realized like, "Hey, we

actually could make more money if it's free and we just like design the game to be addictive in a way where people want

to play the game and it's like really fun, but also there's enough friction that people will

want to spend money to make that game more fun for them. Like it it feels I remember when I worked at that studio,

the game that was the most popular game. Like we had all these games, there was like a car game, there was like a pirate

game, like whatever, but the game that made the most money was like a fashion game and it was marketed towards women.

And that was the game that made the most money and because of that, I think like people on the team had good intentions.

Like they wanted to design it in a way that was really respectful and like we had a professional fashion designer that

worked on the team who was like predicting trends ahead of them happening so that when people played the

game, it was like really really well thought out, but the people kind of above us, like the the people in charge,

there was like an analytics person, like the people in charge of money, they were the ones that kind of turned the game

into this like money-making slot machine. And I feel like we're kind of seeing the

same thing happening with cozy games where it's like I think the intention when these games started coming out and

like this became kind of like a subgenre, like when people started using the word cozy to describe like a genre

of games, I think people had good intentions, right? People have good intentions behind making games that are

cozy and satisfying and gentle, but then people see like oh, the vast majority people that are playing these games are

like they want to spend money. Let's like turn out some slop and see if we can make money off of this.

>> Cuz I feel like there's a lot of overlap between like free-to-play models in mobile gaming, but also like

free-to-play stuff in cozy games, which is like unfortunately like pretty predatory, and that was like a big

reason why I wanted to leave mobile games. It's getting bad enough that even die-hard members of the community are

beginning to notice and actively decide against playing or giving money to these increasingly shady games. During the

height of Animal Crossing's popularity in 2020, many people saw the game as a radical act of rebellion against the

corporate capitalist hellscape that we all lived in. As businesses stalled and commerce slowed to a crawl, Animal

Crossing allowed people who would have usually been at work to instead spend their mornings collecting shells,

harvesting fruit and vegetables, talking to their neighbors. It allowed them to live slowly, thoughtfully, surrounded by

nature and community, far from the vice grip of corporate work culture. But then several articles began to come out about

the game's overtly capitalist themes. After all, you do spend most of it paying off a huge debt to Tom Nook, who

once ran a small humble >> shop in previous games, but is now the head of Nook Inc., a global

conglomerate. Refinery 29 called the game a capitalist dystopia. Vice questioned whether Tom Nook was a

pleasant landlord or an anarcho-capitalist. And The Next Web called him a patriarchal tyrant. It

wasn't just capitalism, though. Vice contributor Gita Jackson wrote in 2020 about the colonialist influences found

in the game. Quote, "Animal Crossing: New Horizons is basically a fantasy of harmless colonialism, one where all the

rough edges have been sanded off to make room for a talking animals, pastel furniture, and catching bugs. I may not

be displacing a native people or anything like that, but it's still hard to wash off the politics of the frontier

when I play. The idea of finding unoccupied land and taming it, turning it into an urban society is so entangled

with colonialism that it is impossible to unravel that knot. She goes on to discuss using Nook Mile Tickets to

travel to random uninhabited islands where she absolutely decimates them, chopping every tree, picking every

[music] flower, grabbing every fish and bug she could, leaving nothing in her wake. These capitalist colonialist

critiques of Animal Crossing also exist for pretty much every other cozy game since they all inevitably share gameplay

elements and themes. Most cozy games rely on gameplay loops where buying products is always the end goal, whether

it be cosmetics for your character or a bit of watering can that helps you water a larger radius of soil. Even in a

magical fantasy world about befriending cute animals or becoming a witch, the accumulation of capital is still pretty

much always the player's main goal, which has led to many game critics and scholars asking whether these games are

really an escape from capitalism or a reinforcement of its ideals. Additionally, most cozy games are set on

untamed islands, rugged farms, or small villages tucked away in forests and mountains. And those same games often

task you with chopping down trees, tilling soil, harvesting resources, even reshaping the very land itself to your

liking. In the words of Gita Jackson, leaving nothing in your wake. These are all valid criticisms that I agree with.

Cozy has become a marketable buzzword. The genre is oversaturated and filled with cash grabs. Gacha is increasingly

entering the space, turning cozy games into pay-to-play nightmares. And there are plenty of discussions to be had

about the genre's normalization of themes like capitalism and colonialism under cute pastel guises. Wholesome

games are not always that wholesome, and that's interesting to talk about and dissect. As a counterpoint, you can take

all of these criticisms and label them at so many other game genres. Roguelikes, survival crafting games,

deck builders, first-person shooters, Souls-likes, indie RPG Maker story games, battle royales, all of these

genres and more have been accused of being tired out and oversaturated at one point or another. First-person shooters

like Overwatch, Apex Legends, Fortnite, and Valorant make their fortune off of loot boxes and premium skin

microtransactions, as do popular gacha games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. Pretty much every game is a

capitalist hellscape when you boil them down to their basic mechanics, the accumulation of wealth and power. There

are countless games that have been accused of pushing controversial ideas, themes, and even propaganda. It's not

even a conspiracy at this point. Call of Duty is made with consultation from the US military and is just straight-up used

as a recruitment tool. They literally made an esports team in 2018 to try and get their recruitment numbers up. This

is a real thing. That's its own whole thing, but my point is that these are problems present in a very wide range of

video games, and they can and should be discussed and dissected. And yet, we see so much of that discourse specifically

leveled towards this one genre of game. So, why does any of this matter? We're talking about pastel [music] farming

sims and games where you run a bookshop as a cat. It's not that serious. And well, it's that attitude which is kind

of the problem. Framing it as not a big deal dismisses the very real problems and allows them to thrive. Misogyny,

like many other forms of bigotry, is most effective when it communicated subtly through jokes and memes, eye

rolls and dismissal, through antagonistic comments, through assumptions and implications that

certain types of games and those who play them are of lesser value than others. When women react with

understandable anger and sadness at being laughed at, excluded, or treated as lesser than, it's dismissed as an

overreaction, making a big deal out of nothing, attention-seeking, trying to play the victim. This puts the focus on

the reaction and how overdramatic and overblown it is rather than the initial action that caused the upset. I know

this is like an internet buzzword at this point, but this is genuinely an example of how gaslighting can work.

Because in reality, all of this does matter. It's estimated that 3.5 billion people worldwide play video games, over

40% of the global population. It's a bigger market than music and movies combined. With how many young

impressionable players are in gaming spaces, games are an incredible way to spread ideas and messages to a very

engaged audience. Whether those ideas are stories, brands, products, lifestyles, or even ideologies. In a

2025 article for Frontiers in Psychology, Cynthia Miller, a dress a leading scholar in the field of

extremism and radicalization, wrote about how gaming helps to channel everyday misogyny into violent

extremism. Quote, "Gaming chats are peppered with a constant stream of toxic, racist, homophobic, and

misogynistic content that desensitizes, dehumanizes, and ultimately can radicalize individuals through a broader

normalization of hate. 85% of the UNOCT survey respondents reported witnessing problematic or toxic behavior in gaming

spaces, mostly through verbal abuse within in-game chats or using voice-based communication. Hateful,

antagonizing, or dismissive comments about women in a game chat, or a Discord, or a Reddit post are common and

often shrugged off as jokes. If women push back against these comments, they're making a big deal out of nothing

and need to grow a thicker skin. If men call it out, they're called simps, white knights, told that she's not going to

[ __ ] you, bro. This has created a culture where victims are discouraged from speaking up, and these seemingly

small insignificant comments are allowed to build and become normalized in the gaming community. And when gamers are

desensitized to misogyny and other forms of bigotry, they're far more likely to engage with extremist ideologies down

the line. Mila Adris continues, "Even when a game's content is benign or when there is no extremist recruitment taking

place in deliberate ways, the games themselves help anchor communities of players who foster and incubate extreme

ideas and expose new and young players to a constant stream of slurs, phrases, and symbols that express hate towards

others. And because the experience of gaming together also creates social bonds, a sense of belonging, and group

membership, this exposure to hate weaves racist, misogynistic, and homophobic ideas into an experience that fosters

emotional and social connections with others." Mila Adris concludes her article by reinforcing that misogyny and

violence don't come from video games, nor do they turn young men into violent attackers like the media has

historically claimed. But these harmful ideas and beliefs around women, that they're naturally bad at games, that

they're attention seekers or fake gamers, that they are harlots or e-thots, that they can't understand

complex games on the same level as men, that they're intruders or larpers, that they should stick to simple girly games,

these beliefs can quickly become normalized and reinforced in online worlds and gaming communities and may

draw young people who are already isolated, struggling, or angry down extremist rabbit holes. It's worth

noting that these attitudes negatively affect men as well. When I asked my Instagram followers if they had

experienced judgment or dismissal when playing cozy games, there were tons of guys who shared experiences of being

shamed or made fun of for playing games that weren't manly enough. Most of the time, these judgments came from close

friends, partners, or parents. The point of this video isn't that all criticism against cozy games is sexist. There are

so many valid criticisms. There are a lot of terrible, terrible cozy games that are literally just asset flip

shovelware with cozy AI branding slapped on top. There are increasing issues around predatory monetization and gotcha

mechanics. There are complex discussions to be had around the themes presented in these games and what kind of messages

they're sending. There are some that argue these games are infantilizing or pandering with their overtly female

targeted marketing and designs. These are all completely reasonable complaints and no one should be made to feel weird

for voicing them. But it's the overwhelming criticism and controversy that follows the genre combined with

beliefs that cozy games have less value than other games due to their perceived lack of difficulty, inherent assumptions

that all women love cozy games because of their soft domestic nature, or that cozy games are the de facto space for

women to be, dismissal of cozy games as weak, soft, boring, and mindless. These subtle implications that women are less

intelligent, less strategic, or less competitive for the slower-paced games that they might like to play. Girly

games, casual games, cozy games, they're all puzzle pieces in a far larger and more complex picture. They give us a

glimpse at the throwaway comments, the dismissive attitudes, and the unspoken beliefs that slowly build up over time

to create this atmosphere of misogyny not just in cozy games, but in all games. At the end of the day, there are

so many wonderful people everywhere who love video games, people of all genders and races and backgrounds. Everyone in

the gaming community is united by a common interest, and yet we are so often divided by the narrow boxes and

stereotypes that we put ourselves and others in. Cozy games, FPS, dungeon crawlers, deck builders, strategy games,

action games, interactive fiction, RPGs. At the end of the day, they're all games. We all love them, and we should

all strive to create fun and welcoming communities for everyone. Cozy games can be an escape from reality, a way to

forget about your troubles and immerse yourself in a new world, a way to relax and unwind. But unfortunately, they

often serve as a reminder that female joy is never safe from scrutiny and mockery, even in digital islands filled

with talking animals. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. This is my first time

filming in this style outdoors, so hopefully it's okay. The camera's not too shaky. The sun isn't fluctuating

like crazy. I guess we'll see, but I really hope that you enjoyed the video. I'm really excited to do more of these

types of deep dives or examinations of different topics now that I've changed my schedule up a little bit. So, yeah, I

really hope that you enjoyed the video and yeah, I hope to see you in the next one. Bye. A huge thank you to my

Garfield Overlords over on Patreon, Lilac, Jessica Kelberg, Tory James, Jenna, Bins, Mrs. Silv, Buscabu,

Mezzopan Eating Duck, Leopold the Rabbit, Tony Terras, Woljix, Yusapius, Tolma, Trazemas, Ocean Gremlin, Kevish

Sundown, Bonzo, Blogbag, Eden Cassidy, Kia Jay Parker, Hazy Blue Wolf, Katrina Likes 5E Stuff, Michelle Olson, Matt Ala

J, A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma and by Question Mark, Doug, Simon, Xavier Araujo, Samary Braley, Home Hamburger

Hand, Dozo Blunt, Estrium Vortex, and Jessie Chisholm. A huge thank you to all my supporters over on Patreon. If you

want to join these guys, there will be a link in the description and yeah, thank you so much for watching and I hope to

see you in the next one. Bye.