Comment on 'Friendslop' dominated 2025 by proving time and time again that graphics are overrated

Kirk@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• Grapho@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Yeah, I see many people using the name without apparent malice but it feels inappropriate. Slop is low effort bullshit designed to capture the biggest market for the lowest cost, with little artistic vision. I don’t get that impression from most, if any, of these games.

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  • Kirk@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    This is also the first I’ve ever heard the term in any context so I’m hesitant to believe the author when they say “it looks like it’s sticking”…

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    • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’ve heard it previously, the first time I couldn’t help but crack up because the term was so petulant and asinine. ‘They’re playing cheap games with low res graphics with their friends and having fun, someone make them stop!!’ is the vibe I get every time I hear it, and it’s still a hilarious term to me.

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    • alk@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’ve heard it for a while now, and when I first heard it I know precisely what it meant with no explanation. It really is a “good” (linguistically only) word.

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    • greybeard@feddit.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      GiantBomb had a “Best Friendslop” award this year.

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    • GammaGames@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It’s unfortunately more widely used in the dev space too

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• alk@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I think it comes from a different place, unrelated to graphics. “Old” or “traditional” gamers are more and more getting turned off by games like among us, fall guys, and the like. Those are some early examples which popped off during the pandemic, but the “genre” of similar games is what is referred to by friendslop. Playing games with friends is fine, but many of these games would be entirely unplayable without friends, and rely substantially on interactions with friends to provide entertainment with only a loose framework to support that.

  That itself isn’t necessarily bad, but the point where this turns into a problem is when a lot of these games fail or do not try to actually make good gameplay beyond that. Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just describing why it exists.

  There is a growing rift from the group of people that would be described as “gamers” in the 90’s, 2000’s and 10’s and the group of people that are described as gamers now, which is largely more casual than the first group. The former group is where most of the people who would use the term friendslop come from. They want games with substantial gameplay that doesn’t have to rely on social interaction, regardless if it relies on online multiplayer. The latter group is just having fun doing things with their friends, where 10, 20, or 30 years ago if they were the same age, they might have done in person while “gamers” at the time would still be playing video games.

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  • Kirk@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Ah yeah that’s a good point. I think “gamers” used to be a more distinct group with a more distinct identity, nowadays it’s like saying “moviegoer”.

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  • Rakqoi@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I think your explanation is pretty accurate and I agree with your point that it has nothing to do with graphics. however..

    there’s no reason you can’t make a game that does all of that but does actually have good polished gameplay, but so many games chasing (and catching) this trend do not.

    Any time I see someone say this, they always fail to actually provide any examples of games that fit this description. I know you aren’t defending the term but I just noticed that parallel between your description and the explanations provided by people who criticize these sort of games.

    The first time I heard of the term, and when it started getting popular, was around the time PEAK released. At first glance, it seemed like the game fit the term, but after a bit people started realizing that it actually was a fun and well designed game that has some longevity. Ever since then, people who use the term negatively always concede that their prime example doesn’t even fit their criticism, but fail to provide a list of other examples.

    It really makes me feel like it’s just people complaining about things for being popular, without any actual basis for their criticism.

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    • alk@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I think among us is a great example of this, to take the first one that got popular. It’s just a form of werewolf, blood on the clock tower, town of Salem, etc. Just distilled and simplified and put onto phones and made accessible. The “gameplay” is that of a board game, just with a few moving pngs. I’d much rather play one of the games I listed above which has more engaging mechanics with the same premise. Among us is hyper simplified, and I believe it relied on social media and the pandemic and an extremely low bar to entry to gain snowballing popularity.

      It’s not a “good” game in comparison to most of its competitors at the time. But its competitors weren’t as conducive to social media reactions and didn’t have that spark of luck at just the right time to start snowballing, or lacked the accessibility of simple mechanics.

      I typically do not play these games, but I see a new one on a daily basis. The problem with naming and blaming is that someone who sees something they don’t like doesn’t investigate further, but starts to notice trends and patterns over time of the same “type of stuff” on their social media feeds over time.

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      • GammaGames@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        The Among Us devs didn’t rely on any virality for success, the game had been abandoned before it blew up

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• LukeZaz@beehaw.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I agree that calling these low-poly multiplayer games “slop” is terrible, because there is clearly a ton of love and effort poured into them.

  Depends on the game. Lethal Company? I wouldn’t call that slop at all. Content Warning? Yeah, no, that’s slop. It was a fun little jaunt to try it out for free, but that game felt so shallow and burned out on me so incredibly fast that if I had paid anything for it I’d probably have felt ripped off.

  To me, “friendslop” doesn’t necessarily mean the game isn’t fun, it instead means that it 1) relies heavily on friends to be fun and 2) has some element of feeling like a cash-in. I don’t count Lethal Company because it doesn’t have either issue for me. Content Warning, meanwhile, was worthless to me in singleplayer and relied so thoroughly on the camera as a gimmick that it feels like the epitome of the term.

  R.E.P.O., however – which you didn’t mention but which I still have thoughts on – I’m torn on. On one hand, the gameplay is a more detailed and engaging form of what Lethal Company has, and it can easily be fun alone. On the other, the way semiwork interacts with their community in their news videos feels like Youtube engagement rot so strongly that it taints the game for me by extension; it (and their emoji abuse) makes me feel like the game has the “love and passion” of a dorm room dildo prank, even though it’s well-put-together enough that there’s no way that’s the case.

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