Tea and a videogame

Working at coffeeshops is a relatively new thing for me. I see coffee shops as social spaces, where I meet people and have some tea and maybe a snack. (I’m not quite a coffee person.) But since my schedule has got impossibly busy over the years, I’ve learned to find a nook to work on focused tasks helps be more efficient and a bit less stressed.

So I was working at the tea shop the other day, and a woman sat next to me with her tea and The New York Times. And it struck me – some people get some alone leisure time by going out and finding a place to solve crosswords.  Being a videogame person, I had to ask on Twitter, as onedoes, whether other people went to play videogames to the coffeeshop.

This older woman next to me has come to the coffee shop to do her NYT crossword and have a tea. Are there videogames you’d play in a coffee shop?

— Clara Fernandez-Vara (@clarafv) November 11, 2017

I received a fair amount of responses, though nothing to call them strong evidence. There were story-driven games like Firewatch, Kentucky Route Zero, 80 Days; one person played Zelda: Breath of the

 Wild. There were casual games like Clash Royale or Plants vs. Zombies, including time-management games like Diner Dash. There was also room for sophisticated puzzle games like Beglitched. Farming simulation games such as Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, get several mentions. One person mentions turn-based strategy games, which seems to fit the environment. All these games are single-player, mostly on mobile (I’ll count the Nintendo Switch as such) but some were played on a laptop.

The responses in the thread confirmed my suspicion that the kinds of games that one would play in the coffee shop are similar to bringing a book, a crossword, or any similar kind of puzzle (sudoku, nonograms). The idea is to abscond to spend some time alone with a story, or with a challenge that may requires a certain amount of focus — let’s say that Beglitched can be the videogame equivalent of the Saturday crossword of the New York times. Being offline also seems important. I don’t quite see people playing first-person shooters or MOBAs at the coffee shop – although I’m sure some people do – just because it’s very easy to get passionate and loud while you’re fighting, and you need a reliable connection to play online.

There are other social spaces to play other genres – there are board game cafes, there used to be cybercafes in the 90s with LANs to play first-person shooters. Perhaps there’s a business model for a coffee shop that organizesmulti-player events and competitions. But when it comes to going to a coffee shop, for you and your game, stories, puzzles, and turn-base strategy go well with a cuppa. Or coffee.