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N00b22, do gaming w 'Friendslop' dominated 2025 by proving time and time again that graphics are overrated

So why does it have “slop” on the name? Should be Friendpeak

helix,

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.

Surenho,

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.

helix,

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?

Smoke,

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.

Ekkosangen,

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).

helix,

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.

Ekkosangen,

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?

helix,

Yeah, I mostly agree with that. What about friendjank?

Smoke,

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.

pogodem0n, do games w 'I've had so many projects that have been discontinued lately': Nier creator Yoko Taro says he's been working on plenty of games—but they keep getting cancelled before he can announce them

I really loved Nier games. Hope he makes something similarly weird someday.

regdog, do games w Uh oh: Ubisoft postpones its quarterly financial report at the last minute and halts stock trading

This is good news for everyone who is not an ubisoft shareholder

sugar_in_your_tea,

Why? What relevance is Ubisofts poor record keeping to non-shareholders?

lightsblinken,

how so?

atro_city, do gaming w Just in case you thought reviving dead games seemed easy enough, GOG had to hire a private investigator to find an IP holder living off the grid for its preservation program

I don't understand how these guys did not support Stop Killing Games. I seemed right up their alley and they didn't say a word about it.

bjoern_tantau,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

Not only that. They were actually working up to support it, together with their preservation program but then just dropped it for unknown reasons.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Is it possible they got an ultimatum by an important company they work with?

E.g. imagine the damage Bethesda could do to GOG by refusing to allow their games on GOG any more.

hamsterkill,

Bethesda

That’s Microsoft now. And they’ve never seemed gung ho about GOG (I can’t think of any MS game that GOG listed while MS had control over it). Considering their “Dreamlist” thing and the status of Freelancer on it, I’m sure GOG has been lobbying hard with Microsoft to work with them, though.

Dave,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

Oh shit it is, and is owned by a Microsoft subsidiary that owns all sorts of games on GOG. Elder scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Quake, Dishonored, and more. GOG would be screwed if they pissed them off enough to get all those series taken off!

Kolanaki, do games w 'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed'
@Kolanaki@pawb.social avatar

I am a premium gamer; if you want me to play your premium game, you’ll need to subscribe to me for $29.99/month or $324/year (that’s a 10% discount from the month to month!)

mohab, do gaming w 'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash

TIL broken is a premium feature 😂

Deyis,

Advanced purchasers get access to a special gamestate: “Fucked”.

mohab,

Conan did a Clueless Gamer playing it and the game crashed halfway through 😂 Not even making it up, it's on YT.

onlooker,
@onlooker@lemmy.ml avatar

Watched it earlier this week, can confirm. Here’s the link.

Matty_r, do games w After stretching the definition of 'beta' for 8 years, Escape From Tarkov is finally hitting 1.0
@Matty_r@programming.dev avatar

Did they ever end up enabling Linux support?

v01dworks,
@v01dworks@piefed.social avatar

No, but I was actually able to play some solo on Linux when I tested it, and the single player mod SPT works on Linux

I don’t believe online PVP works though

Truscape,

Nah, BSG hates linux. The Single Player Tarkov mod has a guide for it though.

Matty_r,
@Matty_r@programming.dev avatar

Didn’t even know that’s a thing. I definitely wouldn’t buy it just for that though

KoalaUnknown,

Nikitia (the CEO) said that Linux support will be looked into in the future but 1.0 is the current priority.

Matty_r,
@Matty_r@programming.dev avatar

We’ve heard promises like that in the past and its almost never come to fruition. So, I doubt that very much.

KoalaUnknown,

He didn’t promise anything; he said they would “look into it”.

TwinTitans, do games w Bungie CEO Pete Parsons retires: With Destiny 2 sentiment at an all-time low and pressure from Sony growing, Parsons has decided it's time to 'pass the torch' and head for an exit
@TwinTitans@lemmy.world avatar

Fucked that company to near death. You do not deserve retirement.

AstaKask, do games w ESO devs at ZeniMax reel from Microsoft's 'hollow' layoff emails, with some wondering how a 'carcass of workers' is 'supposed to keep shipping award-winning games'

Making award winning games aren’t the most effective way to make a quick buck. Getting children addicted to gambling is.

W3dd1e, do gaming w European game publisher group responds to Stop Killing Games, claims 'These proposals would curtail developer choice"

This entire argument is nonsense. With enough advance notification, all future games can be built with these rules in mind. If you are developing it in that way to begin with it’s not going to require any extra work.

echodot, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

The ego on this guy is just unprecedented. It’s Borderlands, most people can take it or leave it.

TipRing,

My take is that Borderlands 1 was boring, Borderlands 2 had decent game play but was held up by excellent writing and characterization and every Borderlands game since has been trying to recapture the magic of the second game but just feels hollow. They aren’t terrible, but they aren’t amazing either.

NotBillMurray,

I feel like borderlands 1 was boring but had some high points, but the dlc really started to capture what the series would become. The general Knox dlc is still one of my favorites.

scrubbles, do games w Young men are 'playing videogames all day' instead of getting jobs because they can mooch off of free healthcare, claims congressman
!deleted6348 avatar

What we can? How? I’ve been eating ramen and hemorrhaging savings paying for cobra

Lost_My_Mind,

Well see thats you’re problem. Ditch cobra and join J.I JOOOOEEEEEE!!!

Then you can be paid under minimum wage to risk your life fighting in unjust wars, only to find your government abandons you and any help you were promised for injuries or complications to your daily lifestyle as a result of your time in the service.

See? 'MURICA!

drmoose, do games w Nexus Mods' new owners promise they won't monetise the site to death as users panic at the whiff of venture capital

As a software engineer i always found nexus simply archaic. Hot take but the molding industry might be better off with a new mod index.

hazl,

Here’s how it goes with half the games I mod these days.

  1. Game not manageable in Vortex out of the box
  2. Find the extension that makes the game manageable
  3. All popular mods are based on one single mod that acts as a framework or SDK for those other mods
  4. That prerequisite mod isn’t well maintained on Nexus, and the author recommends using $otherModManager to manage this game
drmoose,

Funny how all of that is straight up solved with any package manager or even git itself (with submodules) for free and yet gaming community is protecting some proprietary burning heap of garbage.

pory,
@pory@lemmy.world avatar

The main problem in your setup is you installed Vortex. It and its prior incarnation Nexus Mod Manager have always been a thorn in actual mod developers’ sides. Mod devs can easily tell you where to extract the zip to, and what dependencies you need. Any load order manager type thing will always be better when designed specifically for the game you’re running. Having an “easy one click GUI!!!” doesn’t actually help anybody because modding different games isn’t a universally systematic process.

Blaiz0r,

It should all be open source.

First thing is mods should just exist on free hosting providers for source code like GitHub/Lab etc.

Then an optional mod manager software that can import mods from these sources.

Non of this really needs a centralised community, these places already exist thanks to other better suited services like social media

Ibuthyr,

But social media is 95% turbocancer…

Blaiz0r,

I mean things like Discord and Revolt, even Reddit is better for communities to discuss things about mods than the Nexus site

Ibuthyr,

I didn’t down vote you, but Discord is a huge offender regarding enshittification of the internet. Reddit might even be worse.

Blaiz0r,

That’s not my point though, they’re much better at holding discussion and keeping people updated than the Nexus mods site was

JeeBaiChow, do games w Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months'

Maybe the suits can fix that in a week by using AI.

/s btw

jonne,

Hey ChatGPT, code a new island!

WanderingThoughts,

Players: it’s not unique enough and that makes it boring. It’s like they rushed this one with some standard stuff.

Genius, do games w After saying negative reviews 'might just cause our death' and 'we've got a few months left in the oven', No Rest for the Wicked CEO claims he never said they were in 'immediate financial danger'

This man is a cartoon. I love him. He sucks so bad.

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