nasty “cozy gamers”

I’ve played a lot of games that get slapped with the “cozy” tag - the big ones like Stardew Valley, Coral Island, Palia, Sims, ACNH, HKIA, Fields of Mistria, Cozy Grove, House Flipper, as well as smaller gems like Coffee Talk, Kind Words, Gourdlets, Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, Sticky Business, Until Then, all kinds of low stakes simulators and more. When I meet people in real life that have also enjoyed some of these, we tend to get along well. Online, however, I feel like the communities of such games have been completely poisoned. I wrote previously about how toxic fandom can be online, but I think specifically “cozy gaming” spaces have a lot to reckon with in that regard. ☁️☁️☁️ It’s odd, because I feel like cozy gaming initially drew pretty great people together 2014 and onward. To me, it was basically an antidote to how the rest of gaming often was, which was very focused on performance, wins, losses, bragging about difficulty levels and boss fights. Everything had to be as hard as…