If affect is the experience of (specifically) intensity, this “moment of unformed and unstructured potential”, then games absolutely have the ability to inspire affects in players themselves, and serve as a lens through which we view our own unconscious habits and impulses. Although I am not the most avid player of video games (or hardly at all; Sally’s Spa and Poptropica were the two main games, if any, on my phone when I was a middle schooler), I was still puzzled by the notion of the “cozy game”, as sited by Waszkiewicz and Bakun in their essay “Towards the aesthetics of cozy video games”. When playing any game I still find myself rushing to complete tasks and collect the metaphorical bag, the coins, hoping to reach the goal. Not necessarily because this is the only true way to play a game (it very much isn’t, especially in the case of Stardew Valley), but to study affect is to study one’s own impulses through the interface of something else, like an experience, a video game in this case. If my immediate response to being thrown into this farm landscape is one of strain, one of intensity, perhaps it means I in fact put too much pressure on myself in real life too, often finding myself satisfied after the completion of tasks or in the pursuit of goals. This phenomenological approach can indeed help us to clarify whether Stardew Valley is in fact a cozy game. The “coziness” of Stardew Valley was clear to me through not only the appealing and delightful imagery but also through the expansive amount of sheer options. However, up until earlier this week I had been playing by myself, on my phone, with somewhat of an internal confusion because of how successfully my surrounding peers seemed to be doing on the game, I had not recognized that what this vast array of options means is that, obviously, you can take any route.
Playing with a group of people is far different. Once I figured out how to work the switch and join the joint farm, it quickly became clear that every player would do what they wanted to do—no pressure. Of course it was necessary to keep track of our collective money and take care of our plants, but otherwise, we did what we felt like doing. That, for me, took a lot of the strain away, as I found myself wanting to forage out of curiosity, and saw the benefits I could reap from it. I did not have to go fishing if I did not feel like it. For one thing, I noticed my peers already doing that job, and secondly, this indicated to me that they were doing what they wanted to do also—which was not foraging or meeting new people. Despite this independence we all exercised, I still felt supported. For example, me and my friend (with whom I shared the switch) murmured about our desire to go to the beach and seek out seashells, perhaps to give to villagers as presents, but we did not have enough wood to make a bridge to get to the beach. In response, our peers wondered how much wood we needed, and made efforts to lend us some of theirs. This reminded me of the term “flexible optimism”, as my goals became more realistic with the added ammunition of others. Another example is near the end, after we (me and my friend) had spent a large part of the day (and week) running around, going into the town and going up to any of the characters who would speak to us, (and thus getting in some good and fruitful interactions mixed in with one or two insults from Shane or Abigail), we found our avatar very low on energy. This led our peers to offer us their bread or JojaCola, or even parsnips. I felt warm, supported. In turn, there were multiple moments where the other people I played with would laugh and ask – “what are you doing?” “do you want to keep getting insulted by the characters?”, as they would somehow always catch our avatar in moments of failed interaction. I would get preemptively annoyed when seeing it happen on my screen, but once it was pointed out more overtly by fellow players just made me blush and then laugh about it, insisting that this is what I get for being interested in being social. Behind this desire to do well and succeed, even if it means being hard on myself sometimes, there is a stronger desire to be social, meet people, and make connections. The experience of playing with a group of people, each with their own impulses and instincts yet still supportive of group progress, revealed to me the lack of strain when I see that others can laugh about small struggles – because that means so can I. This naturally led me to follow my instincts. “Playing alone together” naturally entwines itself with a certain kind of self-awareness, one that opposes self-consciousness. You can at once notice your own prior impulses (to blush, to sweat, to roll your eyes when met with a failure) and also recognize your stronger inclinations, such as laughing, socializing (with the npc’s but also with your fellow player), and asking for advice in the face of a challenge. I think this is coziness.
Waszkiewicz, Agata, and Martyna Bakun. “Towards the Aesthetics of Cozy Video Games .” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds , vol. 12, no. 3, Oct. 2020, pp. 225–240.
