Comfort
Games

This page is a deep dive into the concept of comfort games. Through user research, this study answers questions about what a comfort game is, what makes a comfort game a comfort game, and how to evaluate comfort game potential. All research is fueled by personal curiosity.

14 weeks

Solo

Role:

UX Researcher

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim © Bethesda Game Studios, 2011. Verified Comfort Game

Minecraft © Mojang Studios, 2011. Verified Comfort Game

On the home page:

Stardew Valley @ ConcernedApe, 2016. Verified Comfort Game.
Valorant © Riot Games, 2020. Verified Comfort Game

Training Buddy

Training Buddy is a fitness-focused virtual pet mobile game I have worked on since concept by myself. The game is a source of motivation and discipline for players who wish to exercise more.

This project is still a work in progress. Everything is here up except the "Designing" phase.

6 weeks+

UX/UI Designer

This case study will answer the questions below through secondary and user research that includes surveys, interviews, and observational inquiries.

What is a Comfort Game?

What makes a Comfort Game a Comfort Game?

How can we evaluate the Comfort Game Potential in a game?

What is Next?

What is...?

What is a Comfort Game?

"A Comfort Game is a game a player revisits multiple times because it's comfortable to play."

This is a game the player would know like the back of their hand. They can turn it on and forget about the rest of the world. The hours they sink into the game can seem endless.

What a Comfort Game is not

This study is not about cozy games. Cozy describes a genre of games that aim to be cozy. Comfort games are unique to each individual and can be part of any genre. Cozy games generally have high CGP (Comfort Game Potential), but a game is not a comfort game unless a player labels it as such.

Disney Dreamlight Valley © Gameloft , 2022.

Ranked Genres

Almost every genre is present in the graph below. The most notable genres that are absent are battle royale and interactive movies. That does not mean they are off the table, however. They would likely show with enough participants. This data comes from my user research of 209 Comfort Games.

Graph of all the comfort game genres. Action, Adventure, and RPG are the top, Stealth, Rhythm, and Visual Novel are at the bottom.

Top Franchises

Top Games

Why Are Comfort Games Significant?

Comfort games bring players immense joy and a way to escape. Being labeled as a comfort game is quite an achievement. On top of that, Comfort games are profitable. According to the survey:

74% of players have or would buy paid-DLC, in-game purchases, sequels, or spin-offs of their comfort game
72% of players have or would buy merchandise related to their comfort game
95% of players recommend their comfort game.

What makes...?

What Makes a Comfort Game a Comfort Game?

To answer the question, user research was conducted, which included seven interviews and a survey with 112 participants. Half of the interviews were observational inquiries, interviews that were conducted while the interviewee was playing their Comfort Game.

You can pause videos by clicking

Interviews

Most interviews were conducted before the survey to determine the running themes between players’ comfort games.

Why Observational Inquiries?

Having the interviewee present the game and guide me through reveals their values. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fan spent much time showing off the music and how much control he had over when and what played, but he glossed over the story mode.

One would think the interviewees would have trouble talking and playing simultaneously. but unexpectedly, the interviewees knew their comfort game so well that playing it did not distract their train of thought.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate © Nintendo, 2018. Verified Comfort Game

Below are the themes discovered within the interviews.

The interviews had four common themes running through them.

High Familiarity

The players know their Comfort Game inside out.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 © SCS Software, 2012. Verified Comfort Game.

Low Stress Levels

Player’s time with their comfort game is
an overall relaxing time.

Night in the Woods © Finji, 2017. Verified Comfort Game.

Mostly Predictable

Players can mostly predict how their Comfort

Game plays out, but there is a small portion

of the game the players can not predict.

Tetris Retro © Lazy Mutt Games, 2023. Tetris is a verified Comfort Game.

Nostalgic

Players playing their Comfort Games rekindle positive memories from any point of their life of earlier interactions with the game, previous entries in the series, or outside factors present during earlier interactions with their Comfort Games.

All the nostalgia the players felt for their Comfort Game was tied to their experience with the game or franchise. No one expressed retro-revival nostalgia like how Yooka-Laylee is meant to provoke nostalgia for 3D collectathon, platformers.

Streets of Rage © SEGA, 1991. Verified Comfort Game.

Initially there was a fifth theme, Low Difficulty, but the survey proved that players' Comfort Games varied in difficulty.

With the information gathered from the interviews, I formed the questions for the survey. Many of the results were expected, like the survey backing up the themes above, but a few were surprising. Here is a look at the more interesting findings.

Surveys

71% of players were minors when they first played their Comfort Game.
4 was the youngest age at which a player first played their Comfort Game, while 40 was the oldest.
The amount of thought it takes players to play their Comfort Game is primarily low.
Most players consider their Comfort Game addicting.
Most players claim their Comfort Game relaxes them and brings them joy.
The amount of nostalgia players felt for their Comfort Game was inconsistent, but 78% felt nostalgia to some extent.

Hades © Supergaint Games, 2020. Verified Comfort Game.

How to evaluate...?

How can we evaluate the Comfort Game Potential in a game?

The Comfort Game Potential in a game can be determined with algebra. Through the research, I created an equation for each of the four themes and a fifth equation to tie all the themes into one value, a CGP (Comfort Game Potential) value.

CGP is a 1-100 value that measures the Comfort Game Potential between an individual player and a game. The CGP range for a game can be found by recruiting multiple players and getting them to fill out a version of the short survey to the right.

To the right is the survey template that goes along the equations. To download the pdf, click the paper icon with a downward arrow or click here.

1. How familiar are you with the game?

f_(1)= the answer to question #1

F_(2)=10*2.7^(f_(1)-10)

Shenmue © SEGA, 1999. Vertified Comfort Game.

2. How stressful is the game?

s_(1) = the answer to quetion #2

S_(2)=-0.8s_(1)+8, if s_(1)=1 then S_(2)=10

Journey © Thatgamecompany, 2012. Vertified Comfort Game.

3. How predictable is the game?

p_(1)= the answer to question #3

P_(2)=(1)/(1.9\sqrt(2\pi ))*47.626*2.7^(-0.5(((p_(1)-9))/(1.9))^(2))

Portal 2 © Valve, 2011. Vertified Comfort Game.

take-this-absolutely-normal-sonic-3-screenshot-v0-zcj1q3eyj2ba1.webp

4. Is the game nostalgic?

n_(1)= the answer to question #4

If n_(1)=yes, then N_(2)=10. If n_(1)=no, then N_(2)=0

Sonic 3 & Knuckles © SEGA, 1994. Vertified Comfort Game.

What is the Comfort Game Potential (CGP)?

CGP=(2.59)F_(2)+(2.12)S_(2)+(2.54)P_(2)+(2.75)N_(2)

Solving the Equations

Besides doing the math by hand, there are two other options for solving these equations. One way is to copy the text under each equation image and paste it into Mathway, a calculator website. Just substitute the value from the survey, and it will solve it.

Otherwise, use this cheat sheet. The cheat sheet has all the equations and the answers to them. It even does part of the last CGP equation, so the only math you must do is add. It only gives values based on whole numbers, though. If a player gives you an 8.5, you will have to use Mathway.

The Math Behind the Equations

In the graph below, only 8.9% of people picked 8 versus 65.2% of those who picked 10. Technically, everyone who filled out this survey is 100% correct because they filled it out with their Comfort Game in mind, but for the sake of explaining the methods behind these equations, some choices are more “correct” than others. The idea is that the more popular an answer is in the original survey, the more “correct” that answer is. The graphs are the key.

The graph above shows that players who picked 10 are more “correct” than those who picked 8. Within this graph, 10 is the most “correct” answer, so 65.2% will be converted to 100%, with the value being “10.” Anyone who picks 10 for this question is 100% “correct,” and they get the max value, “10.” Now, the rest of the numbers are converted to stay proportionate to 10’s new value. From that comes the new graph pictured below. 8 is now 13.7% “correct” with a value of “1.37.” Every player who picks 8 for this question currently gets an “F” value of “1.37”.

Same graph as before, but the values have been swapped.

To find the equation, I entered the values from the graph above into a website called Desmos. In Desmos, I can create a function and tweak it with sliders. I tweaked the equation until the line best represented the points I entered. For this graph, an exponential function is the most fitting function.

Previous graph, but with a line going through some of the points

This produces the equation y=10*2.7^(x-10).

Some of the values change with the new equation. The line goes through both 8 and 10, so their values, “1.37” and “10”, stay the same. 6 had a value of “0.27” in the last graph, but now, when 6 is put into the equation, the value “0.29” comes out.

I repeat the process with the other questions. Stress Levels, on the left, best fits a line; however, 1 abruptly peaks to a value of 10. That is why there is an amendment in that equation. Predictability, on the right, is a bell curve with a peak over 9.

The final equation has each value from the previous equations multiplied by their percentage of the whole. I got those percentages by finding the “magnitude” of each question from my survey and dividing it by all the magnitudes combined. The magnitudes come from adding each answer’s value within a question together. Nostalgia has the strongest magnitude, while stress level has the lowest.

To get these results, I produced 6 loose pages of mad scientist work. Figuring this all out has been challenging and fun.

The Equation in Action

Graph of Animal Crossing: New Horizon's CGP. Most points are above 50 CGP, past 30 hours, and are labeled as a comfort game.

This is a graph of CGP values from 50 different Animal Crossing: New Horizons players.

The CGP is stretched along the hours the player spent on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The idea is that the more time a player spends on the game, the more familiar and predictable it becomes, which also affects stress levels, thus increasing the CGP. The graph has a subtle upward momentum. The yellow dots, which mean the player labeled it as a comfort game, tend to have higher CGP and more hours than the pink dots.

Vertified Comfort Game.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a high general CGP. Excluding the one outlier, the CGP range is 50-100. The game is low-stress, mostly predictable, and easy to familiarize with. On top of that, Animal Crossing: New Horizons's existence is heavily tied to the rise of COVID-19 and the shutdowns that happened around its launch, making the game susceptible to the widespread nostalgia felt for the pandemic (Rogers, 2022). Because of all of this, not only are the CGP scores high, but the game also has an exceptional level of players claiming it is or was a comfort game.

However, not many "casual" Animal Crossing: New Horizons players were recruited in this survey. There is a lack of players who have only played the game 30 hours or less. I picked Animal Crossing: New Horizons to test the equations because I knew where to look to find Animal Crossing fans. I do not think the lack of casuals tarnishes the results above. It's more that the lower end of the full picture is missing.

What is Next?

My next step is to offer inspiration to those who want to increase their own game's CGP by laying out different ways verified Comfort Games increased their own CGP. This process is taking time because I want to continue my research into different studies and the games themselves to ensure I can back my words up.

To give a taste, nostalgia is a very interesting subject to tackle. The goal is not to trigger nostalgic memories and feelings of another time but to actually encourage the creation of nostalgic memories and feelings with the game. Based on Biskas's research, savoring the moment encourages the creation of nostalgic memories (2019), leading me to research how to savor the moment.

For example, one way to savor the moment is to reflect on it (Mapp, 2023). In video games, that can take the form of reflections after a match or mission or ways to access the playtime's history.

Valorant gives very extensive post-match information while highlighting the player's performance. Valorant is so thorough that for any kill, the player can check the weapon they used, how far they were, and what weapon the enemy was holding when they dropped dead.

Within Banished there are graphs that depict the quantity of goods or citizens over time. This allows the player to pinpoint precisely when everything went right (or wrong).

Then there is video playback of the player's game, like the highlight reel in Mario Kart 8.

Mario Kart 8's highlight reel also acts as a vehicle for the player to capture and share their time with the game, which is another way to savor the moment. I will delve into those when I complete this case study.