Have you ever heard of the phrase Cozy Gaming?
I discovered this during the pandemic, when people were looking for new ways to spend time at home without going crazy. Although I’m a huge Nintendo fan, we hadn’t yet gotten a Switch, and we kept hearing about how awesome this game called Animal Crossing was.
It was the perfect pandemic game and our first venture into what we’d learn is called Cozy Gaming, which is defined as games that promote relaxing and non-stressful gameplay.
When you play Animal Crossing, all of a sudden you’re on island time, with your chief concern being to collect resources for crafting, catching fish and bugs for the museum, and helping new residents find a suitable site to place their new home.
It’s this perfect sort of escapism that’s completely relaxing and a joy to play.
But like all games, my work on Animal Crossing started to come to a close, and I began to feel like I just wasn’t interested in continuing anymore.
But last year, I was really itching for a new game that had that similar feel. I was hoping I could find that same island time feel in a new game, which is when I came across Stardew Valley.
This game captured that cozy gaming vibe I’d been searching for. As a farmer who comes to Stardew Valley to take over his late grandfather’s farm, I was transported with that same espapist feeling that I’d found while playing Animal Crossing.
While playing, I hadn’t given much thought to the company that had made the game. Besides thinking the opening logo looked funny and that the game had apparently been created by a company called Concerned Ape, I didn’t think much of it.
But one day, while perusing Reddit about the game, I came across a thread about who Concerned Ape was–apparently, the game had been created all by one person, Eric Barone.
The guy had evidently made millions off the game and was, by most people’s standards, really rich.
Since he made the game all by himself and had few costs, even at a modest price of $15, most of that went straight into his pocket. The game had become wildly popular and had been that way for years.
When researching the game, there was a kind of reverence for how well it was made. Trusted gaming sites like IGN were giving it a 10 out of 10 and calling it a masterpiece.
But here was the really unusual thing. Barone keeps updating the game. Released in 2016, the game was still receiving updates right before I started playing in late 2024.
As one Redditor put it, he got rich off of Stardew Valley, so now he can do whatever he wants. And whatever he wants is to make more Stardew Valley.
And that’s the most interesting thing of all. Even though his success has given him the ability to walk away and do whatever he wants for the rest of his life, adding to this game, his art, is what he’d rather be doing than anything else.
What would you do if you suddenly became rich? As Dan Pink explored in a recent video: after spending a year sipping Mai Tais on a beach, what would you decide you wanted to do with your life?
Barone’s answer has been clear: to continue to work on his video games.
Hopefully, this is a goal we can all achieve in our lives. Creating work that we’d want to do anyway. Whether that’s the work we do to get paid, the work we do to raise our families, or the work we do in our volunteering. Work will always be hard; it will always be challenging, but there should definitely be a sense or a feeling that you enjoy the work you’re doing.
It may be unlikely that you stumble upon an idea that makes you incredibly wealthy(although if you don’t try in the first place, can you ever really know what’s possible?). But the task in front of you is to keep dialing in your work until you find the work you love to do the most.
Work that you don’t need a vacation from.
It’s not that we shouldn’t take our vacation time, but the idea that the only way you can survive your job is by thinking about the next time you’ll be off is no way to live.
While reading up on Eric Barone, I learned that we might not want to emulate all of his habits, like his perfectionism and working for 12 hours a day.
But I can’t help but wonder, with a little tweaking, that he wasn’t very close to maintaining a sense of balance, while also getting the chance to obsess over quality. Focusing on confining his work to a set amount of hours each day, spending more time with his partner, and using his money to intentionally find ways to enjoy the wealth his game has brought him.
The best news for him, though, is that there’s nothing he’d rather be working on than his game. He shares an important gift to the world, and gets to spend his time working in ways that completely align with how he wants to work.
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