We know that cosy games have big audiences – so where’s my epic Call the Midwife sim? | Games

I I am 85 hours after death 2, an apocalyptic nightmare across the earth be infected with death monstersAnd I found that I play it as a cozy game. Hour after the other I went along the photo-realistic landscapes in my pick-up and deliver packages to isolated communities and built new roads. The only reason why I complete the main missions is the opening of new areas of the map so that I can meet new people and build more roads. I find it happy.

Of course I am far from playing video games in this way. “Cozy games” have become A flourishing hut industry In the past five years, led by Crossover successes such as Minecraft, Stredew Valley and Untitled Gans, hundreds of smaller titles also accommodate the highly committed communities. You will discover this month on Steam Cattos post officeA delightful game about a cat -like postal bus, fruitbus, a cute Sim management -SIM, Makeroom, an interior design challenge and a tiny bookstore that is possible to run … a tiny bookstore. Most of these games are united by the same elements: small teams, often young and often work from afar; short play span; Challenges with low operations; And strongly stylized graphics as aesthetic choice and economic necessity.

But why, if the audience is firmly established for cozy games, are no longer wasteful mainstream examples, triple-a examples? It is a clear producer such as Ubisoft, EA and Xbox that it is difficult to develop new ideas -that's why they have all (wasted) many millions to make the next identical -Live service scooter to compete with Fortnite. So why not, I don't know, do you try to make a great adventure with an open world on positive interactions and soft drama? The television, film and book industries are packed with such things. Where is my video game version of Call the Midwife? Why can't I ride a bike around the 1950s in East London to provide babies while I patronize weakly decent working people? Where is the video game equivalent of Downton Abbey or Gilmore Girls?

Of course I understand the most obvious answers. Like Hollywood, the mainstream game development is largely based on the minimization of the risk, and since the dominant cultural beach has always been action, violence and power fantasy, we inevitably land where we are: with a thousand different fighting adventures and not a single bigget game about the love life of a funny single mother and sometimes out. But when we start talking about culture and not about money, other factors come into play. “I think cozy players are nuanced Team artichokewhich makes an adorable anti-capitalist puzzle game called Mythmatch. “Although I think that cozy games with a large budget will be absolutely developed, it is an audience that is not begging and is able to appreciate a wider range of experiences for a larger selection of prices.”

This is an important detail high-end images and huge open worlds are not necessarily the price goal, but only an aesthetic and urgent option. Goose game without title Maybe would not have been so amusing if the beautiful village had been photo -realistic and the terrible goose from 100,000 texturized polygons had been built. Stredew Valley is beautiful Because It is similar to a lively colorful retro game, not anyway. Art is not just about slavish reproduction, thank God. Part of the cosiness of the cozy genre is the restriction of choice and result; The game takes your hand and says that you come in this way, you are safe.

My life -long friend Jon Cartwright is an experienced game developer who looks after small studios in Australia and New Zealand. When I sent him an email about all of this, he replied: “When I think of a cozy game, I think of limited scope/size. And that was a function of them that were largely developed by smaller indie teams with limited budgets. everything In the world and especially during the stress of Covid, it was a really unused market to have a small, safe environment with a low emergency game. The fact that the graphics were “simple” was another source of comfort and charm. “

Charm is difficult to replicate – it will not come about because you have developed an expensive new graphics engine or because 500 employees work on it 18 hours a day. You cannot build hi-tech centers in the desert. It may Failure in big games, just like in large TV dramas, but it is a limited and unstable goods. And indeed, the entire concept of cozy game as an identifiable genre or deliberate play metric is still relatively young; Playing for so long was mainly about winning. The verbs and adjectives of games that they are nice to people still have to be formalized. There is a high old cliché that games are the opposite of film because explosions are cheap, but a close -up of a human face that shows emotions is very expensive. One could say that in an interactive medium with historically limited visual naturalism, it was easier to create drama by shooting it on her than asking for a date. But we have a hundred years of animation history to show ourselves how charm, cosiness and emotional intimacy can come from the most symbolic and stylish pallets.

MOO YU is certain that mainstream, naturalistic, cozy episans pass-actually quotes the model play game Infinity Nikki as an example. Until then, I will be in death 2 to take care of chiral contamination and extinction so that I can save kangaroos, visit inventors and drive my truck through irradiated landscapes with considerable beauty. Sometimes you have to play your game to win your own.

What to play?

August proves a spectacular month for retro arcade collections, and I cannot resist, recommend another before I come back to the 21st century. Operation Night strike end Is a collection of Four celebrated Taito shooters From the late 1980s, including the Wolf Blaster Operation Operation Operation Operation, Light Light Gun Blaster is essentially an interactive combination of the Action Flicks Rambo and Commando. Here you will also find the decent sequel, Thunderbolt surgery, as well as two less well-known size cyber punk flying car shooter night strikers and room weapon, a frenetic setting to aliens, complete with facial jugs and flame. As usual for modern collections, memory functions have been added, and if you receive the Switch version, you can use your Joycon as a temporary light gun. It is not very precise, but it will remind the experienced Arcade residents of using the original Uzi weapons controllers from Operation Wolf.

These colorful, fast and ridiculous popcorn games record the spirit of the era perfectly with its smooth scrolling-2D sets, the electropop soundtracks and monosyllabic, muscle-bound heroes. You will be back.

Available on: PC, switch
Estimated season: 10 hours

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• In a story that becomes a chord with every meeting that remembers the Possen of Veruca Salt, McDonald's Japan Had to cancel a Pokémon promotion due to massive food waste and rampant scalping. According to EurogamerAn exclusive Pikachu card was made available as part of a Happy Meal deal in a limited edition, but the fans were stuck for hours, bumped into battles and rejected their undesirable meals on the streets. Inevitably, the scalps were in force to hoard the cards, which are now at considerable prices at auction locations.

• It is always worth reading Rob Fahey's industry attachments On Gamesindology.Biz. This week he looks at the unsuccessful success of PlaystationAnd analyze why and how the console is in turnover, despite numerous MIS-Steps, including the apparently obligatory loss of rotation for the live service, which has not provided any noticeable rewards.

• Was it really 20 years ago? Xbox Success changes the game design? On this occasion the AV Club has written an interesting analysis From their arrival and focused on how players reacted to the fact that their dopamine reserves were so strong.

What to click

Block

This came from Rich John on Bluesky:

“Is it healthy for the industry to have a juggernach like GTA VI that sucks many headlines and (as expected) money? How does this affect other publishers?”

Well, say it like this: No big games will set up his great hope for 2026 in the same start window as Rockstars Long. When the game was originally planned for a start of the late 2025, three Triple-A developers had told the game business They gave him a large berth. This can be significantly disturbed for development teams who may have planned for a certain release slot for a certain release slot – it can also create a media and marketing black hole in which no one has been interested in anything else for a few weeks.

However, everything is not bad. When GTA V Arrived in 2013, not everything destroyed on its way – casual mobile games like Puzzle & dragon And Candy crush it did well, as well as titles with dedicated fan bases like World of Warcraft And Call of duty. In addition, a massive hit such as GTA brings the entire industry of comprehensive attention, interest and potentially investments, and there is a lot of money to publish similar titles according to the original – Grand Theft Auto. HolyS series To Sleeping dogsWhile it gives the entire market innovative new design functions (GTA Online was finally the original Live service experiment).

So yes, it's healthy. Such a kind. The immediate financial shock can be a challenge for other studios, but GTA V showed that casual players and committed fans of other franchise companies did not pour everything up and to Rockstar. In addition, the consequences of spectacular success can open up new opportunities. After all, no Hollywood studio before Star Wars would have touched a science fiction film with a large budget, but in the following years we have extraterrestrial, Blade Runner, The Thing and the Star Trek films. Success is inspiring – even if it happens to our rivals.

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