Back in 2000, a new phenomenon was about to break. Playing digital puppet master to families of virtual characters, The Sims gave you god-like control over every aspect of their lives. There was no finish line to cross or goal to achieve; you just had to tend to their needs \u2013 or not, should the mood take you \u2013 and occasionally try to stop them from burning down the house or getting trapped in the pool. <\/p>\n
It spawned a host of follow-ups and expansion packs, from parties and holidays to magical new abilities and career paths. And it\u2019s still going: The Sims and its follow-ups have sold more than 200 million copies.<\/p>\n
More than a quarter of a century later, the low-stakes gaming<\/a> genre has exploded in popularity, particularly since Covid<\/a> lockdowns turned unlikely people into gamers. <\/p>\n Perhaps you\u2019ve taken up tending digital crops, found yourself power-washing a digitally rendered fire engine until it gleams or raising a small family of colourful cartoon creatures. If so, congratulations: you are officially part of the cosy-gaming<\/a> movement.<\/p>\n Forget about high-octane battles, car chases and climbing the leader boards via fast reflexes; cosy gaming is all about relaxation, creativity and mindfulness. You can make coffee, decorate homes, grow plants, organise fridges and lunch boxes, oversee an island and solve puzzles.<\/p>\n \u201cYour mind is always trying to be busy,\u201d says Brendan Rooney, director of the media and entertainment psychology lab in University College Dublin\u2019s school of psychology. <\/p>\n \u201cThe right busy is when it\u2019s not overly stimulating, not overly challenging but can give your mind something to do, almost like a treadmill or chewing gum, something like a rocking chair for the mind. It keeps us busy, but in a low-effort way. <\/p>\n \u201cThose patterns can be fashionable or marketed, but they can also be about what people need as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The growth of the cosy genre has also expanded what it means to be a gamer. Forget about the (misleading) stereotype of gamers as largely teenage boys. \u201cI think the average age of a gamer is much higher than people expect,\u201d Rooney says. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge number of female gamers compared to people\u2019s estimations of how many women are playing games. And that\u2019s because games are now so broad.\u201d<\/p>\n A quick look at the numbers shows exactly how popular it has become. Nintendo\u2019s Animal Crossing: New Horizons set digital sales records when it launched in 2020, selling between 44 and 50 million copies. The farm-simulation game Stardew Valley has sold more than 50 million copies across console, PC and mobile platforms. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Virtual holidays: Eight video-game destinations offering a break from the real worldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n In 2020 the games platform Steam had just 19 titles tagged as cosy games; a search for the cosy tag today will turn up thousands.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a market that Neil O\u2019Sullivan Greene, an Irish games developer, is hoping to tap into. Greene Rapture<\/a>, his Cork-based development company, is preparing to launch Sushi on Wheels, a cosy management game that sees players inherit their grandmother\u2019s sushi truck on Japan\u2019s Izu Peninsula. <\/p>\n Players must build the business, serving customers and upgrading the truck as they go, with the ultimate goal of opening a permanent restaurant \u2013 something the recently deceased grandmother never got to achieve.<\/p>\n Greene was inspired to create the game after spending six months living in Tokyo and travelling around the Izu Peninsula. \u201cI thought it had a huge character that I hadn\u2019t seen in a place before, and I thought it would be a really interesting setting for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n He had originally been considering a horror game based on Celtic mythology. \u201cI was going to be looking at this every single day for a while, and how enjoyable is it to make something with loads of gross monsters versus making the funnest, cutest animations? <\/p>\n \u201cAlso, I thought, do I want to make something that also brings fear and anxiety into the community of people that play games in a time when there\u2019s so much of that around anyway, or do I want to make something that\u2019s comforting and provide some escapism? <\/p>\n \u201cI went for that at the end, because I just felt it was better for me and maybe for the people I was making it for.\u201d<\/p>\n Sushi on Wheels can be as stressful or as stress-free as the player chooses. \u201cFor the most part it\u2019s just \u2018I\u2019m going to be a nice cute cat, travelling around, trying to grow a little food-truck business at a nice pace and meet nice characters. Which sounds to me like a more comfortable experience that you want to play for a while longer.\u201d<\/p>\n