In the early-early days of the arcade, games were intentionally over-difficult in order to suck up your quarters. When I was growing up, video games were a primarily “sweaty” affair. But since then, the very genre of “cozy game” has deepened and grown a lot. In the mid-2000s’s, you’d likely have a battle between Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. In years past, I feel this race would’ve been a lot less multifaceted.
If this shit were an election, we’d either be headed to a run-off, or to a very weird parliament (where Stardew Valley would lead a presumably very agrarian, very cozy coalition).
Across the whole survey, there were over 35 unique responses!* Throw them in and you’ve got 23 of 59 - still well under half. But the top three games had just under a quarter of the total votes when all put together! (14 of a total 59) There were three more titles tied for fourth - Breath of the Wild, Pokémon, and Teamfight Tactics. I’d expected the top game would get at least a quarter of the votes alone. What might surprise you, though, is by how little these titles made the podium. Stardew Valley came in first, Minecraft in second, and Animal Crossing in third. The most-picked games from our staff members probably won’t surprise you. Is it all purely personal and mental and bizarre? Are there any unifying factors behind it? That’s what I sought to find out.īefore anything, I want to say it’s deeper than you think.
In fact, my own answer puzzled me! Recently, I’d found that Dwarf Fortress, an old city builder known for being deliberately hard and not-always-intuitive, was giving me loads of comfort at the end of long days.īeing baffled even by my own choice, I started asking what makes a game comfortable, or mentally relaxing, in the first place. I expected a great deal of cozy, cute, life-sim experiences like Animal Crossing, but the answers I got were so varied and wild that I became very curious, very quickly. How do the most “try” of the tryhards unwind? And TL especially has a tryhard culture to it, where we aim for the top in most esports - and a lot of content fields as well. To ask what games TL staff unwind to - and why? It felt particularly interesting to me because as an esports org, we’re an inherently “sweaty” entity. In that spirit, and the spirit of Mental Health Awareness Month, I set out to find the favored “comfort games” within Team Liquid. To point where, now more than ever, games feel like a mental health tool of their own. In particular, whenever I glance at the Steam store page - or a Nintendo Direct - I find a lot more “comfort games” in the vein of Animal Crossing, Breath of the Wild, Stardew Valley, Coffee Talk, Unpacking, etc. As video games expand from niche to nearly everywhere, they’ve started taking on not only new genres, but new roles in people’s lives. Over the past two decades, gaming has become one of the largest hobbies in the world. (or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Dwarf Fortress)
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