The game for this week was Slime Rancher, a first-person shooter game released in 2016. The accompanying paper centered on discussing Slime Rancher in the context of “Cosiness” in game design. The paper described “Cosiness” as games which had any elements that may generally be construed as “cosy.” Some standout examples of “cosy” game design elements were: creating a “home” state within a game world which felt extremely cosy and safe, games where you were not necessarily punished for your actions (just rewarded differently for actions that were better or worse), and games where the stakes were not focussed on survival but rather on achieving higher-order needs such as entertainment, leadership, and more. Of course, the most “obvious” cosy game elements are visual design of a world that is cute and not creepy, challenging but not terrifying, funny even when it’s trying to get you.
The paper posited that “cosiness” as a metric holds massive potential to define how we create and evaluate games. Cosiness is an undervalued aspect that can really transform how a game is received by an audience, the authors believe.
So, is Slime Rancher a cosy game? In some ways, yes. In all honesty, I’m not sure if I would call it an overall cosy game. There was too much entropy for me, and too many moving parts.
Going off of what the paper said, I could identify the following features from Slime Rancher as relevant to the discussion of cosiness:
- The house: The paper talks about having a “home” world that provides solace and cosiness within a chaotic game world when a user desires. Slime Rancher delivers on this end. But the house in Slime Rancher is not as cosy as it could be–indeed, it is a bit of a missed opportunity. It’s not cosy enough, it’s only purpose seems to be going there to get the mail but its design is lacking in cosiness.
- Higher-level needs: The paper discusses cosy games as fitting into a category of games that go beyond survival and make users feel accomplished by depicting them as thriving superheroes and leaders of a game world. In terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, lower-level needs are accomplished already in cosy games and players are more concerned about the highest rung of needs. Slime Rancher goes well with this discussion as slimes don’t die if you don’t give them attention, and it’s a low-stress environment where you really are encouraged to explore and try different ways of playing the game without the fear of the game ending if you make a wrong step.
- Self-directed cosiness: As mentioned above, Slime Rancher’s the sort of game that can end up going in a bunch of different directions depending on how the player plays it. This also means that players can choose to up the ante and control the cosiness level of the game depending on how they play it. Their is no prescription about what one should aspire to do in this game. So a player could be super ambitious, or go a different route: for example, it is possible for a player to spend the entire game collecting the pink plorts and slimes so that the market never oversaturates to the level that would cause the pink plorts to become virtually worthless. This latter strategy would arguably result in a much more stress-free and thus “cosy” experience.
That’s it for this week’s discussion. Hope you enjoyed it!
