Agata Waszkiewicz: The Aesthetic of Cozy Games | Games Now!

This lecture was live streamed on 24th Aprily, 2023. The audio echos until 02:55 due to technical issues that occurred during the lives stream.

Agata Waszkiewicz, Ph.D. (they/them) is a game scholar whose interests include metafictional and experimental video games, the representation of non-normative identities in digital games, and the intersections between food and game studies. Their book Delicious Pixels: Food in Video Games was published in 2022 as part of Video Games and the Humanities series by De Gruyter. They currently hold the position of a Secretary of DiGRA Central Eastern Europe chapter.

As defined by Daniel Cook in 2018 cozy games can be defined by three main qualities: 1) a sense of security, provided by low-level of gameplay difficulty, lack of opponents, threats, and the inability to lose the character and/or progress; 2) abundance of resources (such as food and building resources), and 3) softness, referring primarily to the audiovisual style of the game, which is often characterized by subdued, bright colors and calm music. In this talk, Agata Waszkiewicz will examine the aesthetic of cuteness in cozy games, considering their role in player-game relationship, and pointing out their political and activist potential.

00:00 Introduction
00:55 Cozy Games Definition
02:07 Cozy Game Elements
06:32 Safety | Three Tenets
09:21 Cozy or Wholesome?
10:26 Abundance | Three Tenets
11:33 Softness | Three Tenets
12:10 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
14:34 Three Functions of Coziness
15:32 Coherent | Three Functions
18:34 Dissonant | Three Functions
20:00 Situational | Three Functions
21:15 Thank You!
21:35 Games Cited
21:53 Questions

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