A Friendslop Theory

This post serves as a sort of semi-sequel to Embrace Your Friendslop, so I'd recommend reading that first before this.

So, I have a set of paired theories for why so many embraced the “-slop” suffix of friendslop.

I’ll start with the theory that’s least charitable to friendslop, that itself stems from a long-standing multiplayer games debate: Can a game truly be good just because it’s “Fun with friends”?

My memories of this “fun with friends co-op cynicism” were primarily based in the co-op cover shooter obsessed Xbox 360 generation (though this sentiment certainly stretched out both before and after). In this era, contemporary critics and players would often struggle to confidently diagnose co-op games, finding them fun when playing with their friends, though perhaps lacking as single-player experiences. Faced with these dueling experiences, they would question whether these games were “good” or not.

Tina Amini’s Dead Space 3 review is a great example for this conundrum. For context, Dead Space to that point was a beloved, primarily single-player horror franchise, but Dead Space 3 was notable for having a co-op and action-oriented campaign. Amini, a fan of the franchise, was largely negative on Dead Space 3. And yet, she notes the following: “Everything that is boring and trite in single player feels pretty enjoyable in co-op. Having a companion lets me excuse the game’s faults because I get to enjoy playing a third-person shooter with a friend.”

This question, of whether a game that is fun with friends gets to be considered “good”, may have rang quieter since the co-op craze ended, but its continued to haunt multiplayer games since, and now has returned in full-force for the friendslop genre in particular. And yet, I cannot help but feel this question, of what gets to be "good", is to me far more indicative of player insecurities, both around their own tastes and their ability to critique the things they enjoy, and thus really has very little to do with the games themselves. ¹

Tina Amini simply does not have this problem in her review - she had a bad time playing Dead Space 3 in single-player, a reasonably fun time playing it in multiplayer, and is able to conclude that the game was mostly pretty bad, failing to live up to her own expectations and the expectations put forward by the game itself (though she also notes that if your goal was to play it exclusively with a friend, you'd be able to have a fun time). This is to say that Amini does not get stunlocked by having two competing experiences, instead able to synthesize a wholistic vision of the game bearing them both in mind. The insecurity simply isn’t present.

That is to say that if you play a game with your friends, and your goal is to have a good time hanging out with your friends, and the game is designed to facilitate a good time hanging out with your friends, and then you have a good time hanging out with your friends? I would argue that you played a good game - or at the very least that it’s not worth questioning your own lived experience to determine if you “correctly” enjoyed something “good”.***

I believe that the above theory is likely related to the cultural acceptance of the "-slop" suffix (if also being inherently tied to it's cultural rejection). "-slop" is meant pejoratively by some players towards the genre, but I believe this really stems from more of a reflixive insecurity, players who are uncertain or unwilling to admit that they actually like the games in question.

However, it's this perjorative insecurity that also means it fails to fully explain why the name was so accepted - many people who openly, confidently like the genre also use and enjoy the name friendslop! Rather, I think a wholistic explanation of the “-slop” suffix requires us to look at something a little more material, something I think many reading will be able to relate to.

If you are reading this, you've probably played some friendslop games with friends, and thus I can assume you are likely in at least one discord server with some sort of “games” channel, used to post game reccomendations. Many of us in that position occasionally see a fun-looking friendslop game that we’d like to play with our friends, copy a link to it, and go to post it in that games channel, only to find that the previous message in that channel was also a fun-looking friendslop game - maybe even one that the group has yet to play. In fact, I bet if we were to scroll up through that channel, some of us might even see even more fun-looking friendslop games that have met a similar fate. And yet, how many of us still post that link to that new game?

It is in this context that “-slop” as a suffix makes the most sense to me - not in a derogatory way towards the games themselves or an insecure way re: how we feel about them, but in a purely self-conscious way towards how we as players treat them. There are a deluge of friendslop games at the moment, many of which seem quite good, but we cannot play them all, and thus they pile up in our collective backlog. So that feeling, of sending another link to another friendslop game, forcing your friends to weigh it up and respond to you, in turn inducing some level of shame on them as they possibly relegate it to an unplayed doom?

To me, that can feel a little bit like going up to your friend’s mailbox, sliding a little liquid slop through it, and then following it up with a little note with the 👀 emoji attached.

The aspect that both of theories hone is that of insecurity: We are insecure about whether we even like friendslop titles, and we are insecure about encouraging our friends to play them with us, and thus we diminish the entire affair with “-slop” to create some critical distance betweem us and them, to make fun of ourselves for enjoying them and allay our concerns when we miss them. The games themselves are not slop, but our experience of them can certainly feel sloppy.

That this aspect of insecurity is not inherent to the genre in a ludic sense is itself notable, and probably the best rationale for actually trying to institute a genre name-change (however impossible that may be). That said, it’s also notable as a cultural object - that the insecurity present in the genre’s name speaks to a paired insecurity that must be present within the player-base, and perhaps gaming as a whole. In fact, it is the kind of genre label that could only have formed away from the contexts of institutionalized game development, academia and criticism - spaces where confidence in what was being made / played / analyzed would be far higher.

It’s for these reasons I’m loath to get rid of friendslop - it’s a genre name that helps tell the story of its ethos, its origins and its player-base - a story of gamers who desired the simple pleasures that stem from hanging out with their friends, but who could not help but feel insecure about that desire, and thus masked it in self-effacing irony and cynicism instead.

¹ This is also to say nothing of the friendslop games you can play solo - I’ve played both Peak and Phasmophobia solo and had a fun time, even if it is also worth noting that both experiences take on a very different texture. This might make the games more appealing to a player who really valued single-player experiences, or had less budget to spend on other single-player titles, or even someone who wanted to try these games but wasn't confident in their ability to get together a group of friends to play with them. And yet, I wouldn't argue that these games are "better" for having this option - just notable for having it.