Yahoo Lifestyle Inside the 'cosy gaming' world taking hold among women
I’m warming up by a glowing campfire as I take in the view. The sky ahead is a luminescent, dreamy wash of pink and gold, and flames crackle in front of me as I roast a rosy-red apple in the fire I’ve built in a secluded clearing of this forest glade. In mere seconds it bakes in a dramatic puff of smoke. De-licious.
As idyllic as this sounds, I’m not actually in the wilderness, but in the living room of my one-bedroom flat losing myself in the tranquil landscapes of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom. It’s what’s called an open-world game (meaning I’m free to traverse the environment and approach objectives as I please) based in a land where social media, economic decline and Donald Trump haven’t been invented yet – if only. And though there are other dark creatures to be fought (like goblins), in this expansive fantasy world, I’m most drawn to foraging for food and flowers, snapping photos of wild animals and carrying out small tasks for amiable village folk.
Ten or so years ago, the question ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ might have been a common one thrown me or anyone choosing to spend their spare time frolicking in virtual green spaces and rustling up pixelated meals. But today, this soothing style of low-stakes play has become so popular it even has its own name: ‘cosy gaming’. Cosy games typically refer to those that prioritise soft aesthetics and wholesome pursuits over competition and violence. Beyond just nature-based themes, they are often associated with activities such as puzzle solving, farming and cooking. The term refers to any type of game that gives you that chilled out sinking-into-a-bubble bath feeling – that intangible sense of ‘ahhh.’
Players also use the term to refer to simulation games such as The Sims, Stardew Valley or Palia, design-focused endeavours like Tiny Glade, or those with a bit of an edge, such as the spooky fishing game Dredge or the adorably depraved Cult of The Lamb. Essentially, the theme is no theme and ‘cosy’ is what you make of it. Over the past few years, interest in these genre-spanning games, many of which are created by independent developers, has surged. And, unlike the online fight-to-the-death game Fortnite, one of the most popular titles in the world whose players are almost 90% male, cosy games are often designed with women in mind.
Women, in turn, have voted with their thumbs. According to research by the analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch, 55% of gender-categorised online mentions around cosy games are from female authors versus 25% of general gaming conversations and an estimated 45% of the gaming population is female. When it comes to cosy gaming, online mentions of the genre increased by 57% from January 2023 to January 2024, and online spaces for people curious about gentler gaming experiences, such as the subreddit r/CozyGamers (which has 230,000 members at the time of writing) are flourishing.
So, what's really attracting so many women to this virtual ‘soft play’, and what are we actually getting out of it? Where ‘traditional’ games involving gun fights and zombie attacks places us in scenarios that we can’t – and often wouldn’t want to – recreate IRL, cosy gaming largely involves simulating activities that are domestic, unremarkable, and accessible in the real world. So why don’t we simply, as the phrase goes, go outside and touch grass rather than, you know, pretend to do so on a console?
Soft power
“What I like most about it is I can finally switch off,” says Elle, 22, a US-based graduate student who creates cosy gaming content under the handle @daisyyhoneyy in her spare time. Her videos capture her relaxing seshes playing titles like The Sims, Baldur’s Gateand Minecraft – and showcase her range of cute tech accessories and twinkly desk set-up sprinkled with mood lamps and fairy lights. Her cosy vibes have garnered her 79,700 social media followers, and she can attest to the positive effects that gaming has had on her ADHD and anxiety symptoms. “It helps me feel calm and takes my mind off the struggles of daily life. I can be myself, decorate my dream house or live out my farming endeavours for a while,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK.
While critics of high-intensity games who cite potential links to antisocial behaviour and gaming addiction might raise eyebrows at Elle’s approach, research has also shown that gaming (even non-cosy ones) can also have a positive impact our mental health, beyond just dopamine-boosting button bashing. Studies have shown positive associations between gaming and higher levels of optimism, with research from 2021 finding that students who played a relaxing nature-based game for 20 minutes experienced similar calming effects as those who meditated for just as long.
“Cosy games or familiar TV shows work like a gentle, predictable massage for our stressed-out nervous systems,” says biopsychologist and author of Brave New You Mary Poffenroth. “Players interacting with these virtual worlds constantly get positive reinforcement, which helps to control their physiological stress reaction. This, in turn, can improve emotional stability, lower anxiety and increase wellbeing.”
In the context of our current socio-economic circumstances — where rising rents and spiralling prices have seen a cost-of-living crisis here in the UK that has left us poorer and more stressed — is it any wonder that such games hold such strong appeal? People today are often overwhelmed and being constantly stimulated can make you feel anxious, stressed, and like you don't have control over your life. According to Dr Poffenroth, “cosy games meanwhile, produce a virtual world that signals calm and safety, releasing [feel-good chemicals] dopamine and serotonin.” She explains that this neurochemical reaction helps us to keep a handle on our emotions, “offsetting the ongoing stress and hypervigilance” we feel in our overwhelming day-to-day life.
As Elle’s large follower base suggests, even watching others’ cosy behaviour appears to appeal to our stressed-out brains. One of the most well-known female cosy gamers, the US content creator Cozy K (@cozy.games), has 618,000 TikTok followers and amassed a whopping 17.6m likes on the platform overall. Describing herself as ‘your cosy gaming, hobby and lifestyle bestie’, Cozy K’s content depicts her playing and recommending cosy games but also losing herself in all manner of homebody activities – often snuggled up in a blanket with her cat lounging nearby. Essentially, our frazzled, overstimulated minds react well to the big hug offered by cosy media, which feels far more accessible than wide-open green spaces. Not many people have a sunny forest glade on their doorstep, after all.
But beyond the obvious appeal of flipping your online activities from doomscrolling and comparison culture to home in on a wholesome, calming energy, there’s another more empowering reason that cosy gaming could be thriving.
System reset
Iona (@Eeowna), 30, is a full-time gaming video creator and streamer based in Bournemouth who shares cosy game reviews to her online audience. Out of her 136,000 YouTube subscribers, 75% are listed as female. She explains that, in the time since lockdown restrictions had people reaching for their Nintendo Switches, cosy gaming communities have continued to up their numbers and, bit by bit, they've bloomed into spaces that are free from the abuse and misogyny that’s commonplace in the hyper-masculine world of mainstream gaming. Iona tells Cosmopolitan UK that, “many of us were made to feel like we did fit the ‘gamer’ title, and told that the games we enjoyed weren't ‘real games’. So the cosy game term really gave us all a place to discuss the games we love and form a community around the idea that if you game you're a gamer.” She adds that the cosy gaming title has “led to a lot of people finding a community they didn't know existed, as they finally had a term for the games they loved.”
The demand for these safe spaces is unsurprising, given that the aftershocks of 2014’s Gamergate are still felt today. Ten years ago, in what’s largely understood to have been a backlash against increased feminism and inclusivity in games, groups of far-right men in the gaming community targeted female gamers, game developers and journalists and subjected them to abuse, doxing and death threats. As a result, many of these women feared for their physical safety and left the industry. This hostility is still very much alive in the gaming sphere, with two in three women reportedly being harassed while gaming online.
There is also a wider appeal to cosy gaming. Helen Greetham, founder of indie Afoot Games, and creator of Sherlock Holmes-inspired adventure The Beekeeper's Picnic, due for release in March 2025, explains how she noticed how an early demo of the project seemed to particularly chime with marginalised groups. “A lot of people who were writing to me about the game were talking about neurodivergence,” she says. Of the people who were engaging with the demo regularly, she found that two third of them were female or non-binary. Greetham theorises that, although The Beekeeper’s Picnic doesn’t have “any outright queer representation, [the story] thematically, is very much about otherness”.
Working out whether women, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalised communities are drawn to cosy games organically or embrace them because they feel unsafe in more mainstream gaming communities, can feel like something of a chicken-and-egg conundrum, says Bettina Bódi, assistant professor in digital media at the University of Birmingham. “Cosy games are, in a lot of ways, an extension of feminised hobbies,” she explains. “But there's nothing inherently feminine about them. Because the games are focusing on higher needs like self-fulfilment or finding joy or harmony, they just aren't prioritised in broader culture.” She adds that while “women and queer people have played games and developed them for decades now, their ‘alternative histories’ have long been sidelined in favour of dominant male-skewed narratives.”
But cosy gaming isn’t entirely feminist, cautions Dr Bódi, who likens them to the romanticisation of oppressive systems, in a manner not dissimilar to social media's tradwife trend. While, she says, the appeal of aesthetics and lifestyles that focus on simpler lifestyles makes sense in our current climate, “there's an element of pacification,” she says. “’Don't worry about the world, you can just churn your butter and crack on with things.’” And while that thought may offer us comfort in the moment, those fuzzy feelings are built on a false premise that – as depicted in the iconic meme of a smiling cartoon dog surrounded by flames – the world burning all around us ‘is fine’.
While this may be true, the cosy gaming trend shows no sign of letting up and holds unarguable appeal as a reaction against the always-on productivity cycle we’ve been exposed to for so long. “It’s been so normalised on social media to have a busy, extravagant and perfect life,” Elle says, “but the cosy community is changing the narrative and showing that it’s okay to take things slow. I’m here, showing that I’m tired and just want to play my video games, cuddle my dogs and be in bed by 9pm.” And that, ultimately, is the crux of it all, that – as Iona says – “cosy gaming is something that brings you comfort, something that makes you happy, something that just brings you peace.” In that case, pass me the remote.
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