Coziness in Games: Second Homes, Audiences and Aesthetics

Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144, Ma, Eunice ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7451-546X, Belinskiy, Anton and Bhui, Kamaldeep (2023) Coziness in Games: Second Homes, Audiences and Aesthetics. Games and Culture. ISSN 1555-4120 (Submitted)

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Abstract / Summary

Coziness in games is a concept that has recently emerged in contemporary game culture and has been adopted by games of various genres to create different paces and intensities of gaming. This paper seeks to understand what the role of coziness is in contemporary games and how it is articulated in terms of design, modality, and poetics. We aim to understand how it is formed and make a case for acknowledging and accounting for coziness in the broader context of game culture. We ask: what signifies coziness? How is it integral game design? What functions does it serve? Where does it originate? We conclude that forms of coziness are diverse and that it integrates very differently with the gameplay of diverse genres and for dissimilar target audiences; we argue therefore that coziness can be regarded as integral to game design across the broad range of games and should therefore not just be regarded as a single genre.

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