Snoozy Kazoo

Playing with Capitalism: Metareference, Comedy, and Coziness in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

This paper examines Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Snoozy Kazoo, 2021) as a case study in how cozy games can engage with capitalism through metareference and comedy.

• The paper treats Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Snoozy Kazoo, 2021) as a case study showing that cozy farming and adventure games can engage critically with capitalism through metareference and comedy.
• Its central argument is that cozy games form a distinct subset of the resource-management tradition, which the paper links to extractivist and neoliberal logics in games such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley.
• Through textual analysis, the paper shows the game drawing on RPG conventions like open-world design, fetch quests, and resource gathering while simultaneously exposing them.