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

N00b22@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• helix@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Well it’s basically gaming fastfood: they’re bad games in themselves, and you can only enjoy them with friends. You wouldn’t enjoy them with people you don’t have chemistry with. Whereas there’s some competitive games like CS2 you can enjoy with random strangers because it’s a mechanically well made game.

  That’s not to say friendslop don’t have a right to exist. There’s a time and a place for friendslop, it’s not when you want to play a good game.

  I often compare it to mediocre or bad movies which only work on cinema screens or home theater. If you watch “popcorn movies” without popcorn, you won’t enjoy the movie.

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  • Surenho@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I very much disagree, it’s like judging that samba is not good cos it’s not blues. They’re two different genres with different goals. If it’s fun then it is well designed.

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    • helix@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I very much disagree, it’s like judging that samba is not good cos it’s not blues. They’re two different genres with different goals.

      Funny, that was actually my point I tried to make. I repeat myself:

      That’s not to say friendslop don’t have a right to exist. There’s a time and a place for friendslop, it’s not when you want to play a good game.

      I often compare it to mediocre or bad movies which only work on cinema screens or home theater. If you watch “popcorn movies” without popcorn, you won’t enjoy the movie.

      But that’s where I’d disagree:

      If it’s fun then it is well designed.

      You can have fun with badly designed or badly polished games. It needs an engaging game loop, sure, it can’t be complete crap. But I’d argue that you don’t need to create a good game to create a fun(ny) game.

      Example: EYE Divine Cybermancy. One of my favourite games but I often laugh at the jank and incoherent story, and the bugs, and I’m still having fun.

      Maybe we shouldn’t call it friendslop, but friendjank?

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      • Smoke@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        It reminds me of the gameplay footage played on short videos to provide visual content while audio is playing, or games optimised for streamers to play and overreact to. They aren’t games that are intended to be played and provide enjoyment that way, but as tools for others to turn into enjoyment from playing them, and then their audience gets that enjoyment from participation or simply watching.

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  • Ekkosangen@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Just want to drill into this real quick: a game like CS2 is a good game because it’s enjoyable to play with strangers, but a game like Peak is a bad game because it isn’t as enjoyable with strangers?

    Alternatively, a game like CS2 is a good game because it’s mechanically well made, but what is it about the mechanics in Peak that make it a bad game?

    Take care to not conflate a personal dislike of the genre with objective quality within a context. Liking action movies doesn’t mean rom coms are all terrible (no matter how much one might think they could be improved by a sudden firefight at the climax).

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    • helix@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I didn’t compare CS2 to Peak specifically. I compared good games to friendslop.

      Can you tell me why you’re upset that I call “friendslop” bad games? I didn’t say you can’t enjoy bad games, I’d say in many instances I had more fun in objectively bad games and movies with friends than I had in good games. Sometimes the good games are boring and the jank makes “bad” games great or funny.

      I also didn’t say I dislike friendslop. I enjoyed Lethal Company and Among Us with friends, for example. I also really like watching “bad” movies with friends, we even watched The Room once 😅

      I even watch objectively bad films by myself. One of my favourites is Fortress (1992). This has an 38% rotten and a 40% popcorn meter rating on Rottentomatoes. Which is basically my point – media doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable or funny.

      I’m not always after a laugh though. There’s a place and a time for friendslop, and it’s specifically called friendslop because of that. Don’t see it as an insult.

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      • Smoke@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        One of my favourites is Fortress (1992). This has an 38% rotten and a 40% popcorn meter rating on Rottentomatoes.

        I’d like to take this moment to say I fucking love Fortress and I wish it had the bigger budget it lost when Arnold pulled out of the project.

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      • Ekkosangen@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I’m not so much upset as I am curious why one might label friendslop as exclusively bad games. Peak was used for comparison simply because it’s a good game in the friendslop genre, in the same vein as CS2 being a good game in the competitive shooter genre. The comparison was being made to point out that direct comparison is futile; one game lacking something the other has doesn’t make either better or worse than the other because they’re in completely different contexts.

        It’s part of why I’m growing to loathe friendslop as the name for the genre. As much as people try to insist it isn’t an insult, the connotation is that a friendslop game can’t be a good game. To which I say, why not?

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