Finding Comfort in Non-Cozy Games - Civilization VI
When Cozy games don't quite work for you, there are always other options.
Finding Comfort in Non-Cozy games is a series about how I, and probably many others, find comfort in games that don't usually qualify as cozy/comfort games. They can be dark, dramatic, filled with some really depressing themes, but if you play them over and over and find comfort in them, they become your own comfort games. This is a multi-part series and this is Part 5. I will always link prior and following parts at the beginning and end respectively.
The Introduction
Throughout this series I have always covered games that have stories. They're single player and have you sink into the world that the game exists in. This is primarily how I enjoy to find comfort in games, immerse myself in a world and story that allows me to forget and let go of the world outside of the screen. This also happens to be why I like film and went to film school but that's unimportant.
This week we are going a completely different direction. Towards something that has no story, that has no excessively detailed world that you can sink into and fall in love with. This time we are discussing a game that I have hundreds and hundreds of hours in and used to have a lot of mods installed to make the game have mildly more interesting gameplay and more varied leaders.
I am of course talking about Civilization VI. It came out in 2016 (almost a decade ago? What the fuck?) and the most recent iteration of the series came out earlier this year. VI holds a special place in my heart though not because it was inherently better than V, it wasn't at all, but because I was able to sink into it more because of the much better graphics and easier to enjoy gameplay.
This is a really different type of game
Okay, first off, as I've said, this is a very different type of game than I've covered before in this series. The question might arise in your mind, why would I cover something so different? I wanted to cover Civ VI because it was different. Civilization is a game that allows you to make your own world. That allows you to take the general structure of the progression of civilization and transplant it into a world that is different either because of the people involved, the map, or just generally how capable you are of progressing effectively.
What I mean by this is that Civ VI allows you to do something that other games I've talked about allow you to do as well. It allows you to take your power back from the society that you currently exist in. In Civ VI I'm able to fight who I want to fight, I'm able to decide my societies structure and perks. I'm able to decide the type of Leader I want to have that will allow my people different benefits that the others won't have. I'm able to truly be able to structure the world how I want.
If I want to war against a rather awful enemy leader who has been destroying civilization after civilization, I can. I can choose to completely change how the world exists. If I want to fight against climate change and go for a more science based society, I can fucking do it. If I want to conquer the world to institute a society that is equal for all even if some leaders have to suffer for that equality, I can do it.
I'm sure some of this sounds rather warmonger-y. You wouldn't be wrong. The thing about Civ VI though is that you can be warmonger-y, if you want to. Think about it, in our current society you have no power to control the world. You can look at the news and see the destruction of cities, see the genocide of entire ethnic populations, see war consume countries, but can you do literally anything about it? Nope. You're fucked as an individual and just have to accept it (although you can make changes if you join together, see my Persona 5, Mass Effect, and Metaphor articles in this series for more examples on that).
Civ VI allows you to be able to fight like you wish you could in real life. It allows you to see the destruction of a civilization or people and go "I'm gonna fix that" and then you fix it. You can do this without having to worry about the side effects. You don't have to worry that you're going to be put in prison for arguing to fight against the aggressors. You're able to truly have power over the entire world.
This is what is comforting about Civ VI. This is why you have this feeling of just wanting to go one more turn. Because each turn allows you the opportunity to have power over the world that you as an individual will literally never have. Power is comfort and comfort is power.
But why Civ VI and not Civ V
This is a very good question that I only mildly addressed up in the introduction. It's one I want to address in more depth however. Why is Civ VI more comforting than Civ V? Well, put simply, it kind of isn't. Both of these games provide you the opportunity to have the power over the world that I described in the prior section. If Civ V is more your fancy then that makes sense and is great for you. They're both capable of the same amount of comfort and in the same kind of way.
The reason that I personally picked Civ VI is because it's the game that allows you far more control over things that we as humans currently have to deal with. Specifically, it provides you control over climate change and natural disasters. These are things that are currently shaping the world around us as real life humans. They are deciding how our society progresses and where we might, as a species, fall apart. Civ VI provides you the capabilities to work against this.
If it isn't obvious yet, I find comfort in games that allow me to, in a safe environment, fight against something that we as real people have to deal with every day. In my own life I have to deal with further increasing temperatures in an area that used to have much more manageable summers. This is difficult for me as I have MS which lowers my heat tolerance significantly so temps in the 80s are fucking miserable. But I as an individual can't do shit to help this situation. This also shows in natural disasters. I have a friend who died after losing her home in the Maui fires a couple years ago and it was really rough to hear about. The world is a dark place and the earth can tell you to go fuck yourself if it just decides to.
But in Civ VI, I'm able to develop tech that allows me to work towards a solution for climate change, a way to prepare for and save people dealing with natural disasters. I'm able to find comfort in having power over my ability to help people for the first time in my life. Helping people is comforting to me, so Civ VI allows me to find far more comfort than Civ V because I feel like I'm helping my citizens far more than before.
What about mods?
Ah this is also something I mentioned in the introduction. Mods aren't as integral to my experience with Civ VI as they were with Civ V. With Civ V I had sooo many mods installed, it was quite excessive. I even had Reaper units from Mass Effect because why the fuck not. Civ VI doesn't need to have as many mods installed for me to find it fun and interesting. Instead, the main mods I have installed are different Leaders.
Mods are a way for you as a player to have a bit more of an individualized experience as opposed to what the developers were intending. They allow you to have cross media experiences where you get to play Leaders from different worlds. They also allow you to take some of the annoyances you have with a game and fix them. Quality of Life is a key part of Modding and Civ VI has the amazing Steam Workshop integration that makes the game far more enjoyable to mod and be able to find ways to enhance your experience.
While most of the mods I have installed are Leaders, there are some that allow me to find even more comfort in the game. For instance, there are cheats! As I've talked about before in a prior article (that you can find here) I enjoy cheating in my single player games. There's a mod for Civ VI that provides an easy cheat menu for me to be able to find comfort not just in the power the game provides but in breaking the game. I find comfort in feeling like I have control, and while the unmodded Civ VI allows me to do that, mods allow me to turn that comfort up to 11.
The Conclusion
Overall, Civilization VI is a game that I will always cherish. All of the games I have gone over so far have been ones that I enjoyed simply for allowing me some type of control. Civ VI, however, allows me to have almost all of the control I could possibly want. If I want to be able to change societies structure because I don't like it, I can. If I want to be able to save people who are being massacred by another civilization, I can. If I want to help save the planet by fighting against Climate Change, I can. If I want to help save the citizens of the planet from natural disasters by preparing and evacuating, I can.
Civilization VI is the Civ that, to me, gives me exactly what I want out of a game like this. Civ V has so many positives to it but Civ VI, that's the comfort game for me. I will always remember the days I would play Civ VI with people I knew and we would just sit there enjoying each others company and finding comfort in the power the game provides. Civ VI is a comfort game not because it's a game you can play endlessly, not because you can pick the kind of leader you want to be or decide how your society expands, but because you have control over your own destiny and how your society develops, because you can finally have power over the world in a way that you as an individual never could.
Next Time On...
Next time is going to be very different because it's the last article in this series (for now)! I'm not covering a specific game but rather I'm looking at what it means to be a comfort game in and of itself. I'll be doing a bit more than that but I'll leave that for next time. Until then, find comfort where you can even if it doesn't make any sense.
Meow,
Cat
Just try not to be intimidated by all the choices, go with the easiest difficulty and most basic settings and pick a leader you like. The game will take a while but it's a really great experience once you get past that initial barrier.
Always been too scared to play a civ game. Maybe one of these days.