00:00I don't really know where friendslop came from, but I don't think it's a good thing.
00:042025 has been jam-packed with games, that's a given.
00:07We've had colossal RPGs, mind-bending puzzles, metroidvanias, whatever you fancy playing,
00:13there's been an absolute corker release this year.
00:15However, above all else, one genre of game has been more trendy than others.
00:19And that's right, I'm talking to you about those goofy co-op games that you and your friends have
00:23spent hundreds of hours howling at over Discord.
00:26But that's the thing, they haven't just been called goofy co-op games this year.
00:30Instead, the internet has coined a new term for this style of game.
00:33Friend-slop.
00:35Not friendship, you heard me right, friend-slop.
00:38I'm pretty sure slop is never a good way to describe things, but here we are.
00:42We've gone through phases of creating phrases and words like this,
00:45like adding pilved to describe something that you're really into,
00:49or maxing when you're taking a lot of something in all at once,
00:52but even then, the real meaning of these words is so flexible and down to the user
00:56that you can't really give an exact definition.
00:59Friend-slop, however, felt like nails on a chalkboard the first time that I heard it,
01:04like a bad record scratch in my brain that made me quickly cut through all of the internet lingo
01:08that I'm used to hearing and really think, wait a second, what?
01:11Mostly because it has been used in consistent reference to games that I've really enjoyed
01:15playing this year.
01:16So guys, I want to talk to you about friend-slop and maybe we can make sense of it together.
01:24If you have somehow escaped the plague of the term friend-slop this year,
01:28then let me put it into some games that you might have played which have fallen an unfortunate victim.
01:33Repo, the co-op horror meets Valuable Collector which launched in February,
01:37Peak, the multiplayer mountain climbing simulator from June,
01:41and the demo of Yap Yap from October are three examples from this year alone that immediately spring to mind.
01:47The thing that these games have in common are one, they are multiplayer and best played with a group of
01:52friends,
01:53two, they have goofy yet oddly charming characters to play as,
01:57three, they all have proximity chat and physics based mechanics making them perfect clip fodder.
02:03This doesn't necessarily apply to all games branded as friend-slop,
02:07but it does seem to be quite a common recurring theme.
02:10As long as a game has these sorts of hilarious,
02:12unprompted moments which cause you and your friends to burst into a fit of laughter
02:16and share clips to all of your social media, there's a high chance that it falls under this category.
02:22But why aren't we just calling them co-op games after all?
02:26Isn't that what they are?
02:27Because the more I look into what exactly friend-slop is and why people are branding so many games with
02:32it,
02:33the more I see games from the last few years being pulled in too.
02:36From a quick scroll on Reddit, this entire list of games is considered to be slop.
02:41Lethal Company, RV There Yet, Escape the Backrooms, Magicka, Content Warning,
02:47Last Train Out of Wormtown, Human Fall Flat, Helldivers, Void Crew, Minecraft,
02:53Garry's Mod, Phasmophobia, Abiotic Factor, Among Us, you get the idea.
02:58Basically, any game that can be played with friends is merging under one genre,
03:02which makes it incredibly challenging to define. After all, we've already got multiplayer
03:06and co-op as genre tags. So what really is friend-slop?
03:11Wikipedia describes friend-slop as a video game genre consisting of low budget, low stakes and
03:16often humorous co-op video games sold at bargain prices that one's entire friend group can afford
03:21to purchase and play right away. I have a few issues with this description, mostly revolving around
03:26the price point. Going back to the list of games you've just unfortunately had to sit through,
03:30some of these are by no means a bargain price. Helldivers, Abiotic Factor and Minecraft,
03:36all mentioned by Reddit users as friend-slop, are above the £10, $10 range, which is where I'd
03:42probably put the cutoff for games my friends would immediately buy if I asked them to. So should they
03:46be removed from this list, even if they match every other part of the description? This is where I start
03:51to get a bit lost. So to clear things up, I asked PC Gamer's resident friend-slop enthusiast and writer,
03:57Ellie Gould, how they would describe friend-slop. To which they replied,
04:02hmm, maybe a game that doesn't have to be polished to be fun with friends? Or a game that gives
04:07you the
04:08freedom to get silly with friends? I feel like friend-slop depends on the person. If you play a
04:12multiplayer game with friends and you're able to get wacky with it, then it's friend-slop. It's a
04:16state of mind. Even with this more concrete description though, I still can't get over the use of
04:21slop in this sense. The dictionary definition of slop comes in a few forms, with the most common being
04:27the action of a liquid spilling or flowing over the edge of a container, typically as a result of
04:31carelessness. Alternatively, it's what you feed animals like pigs, rather than setting them up
04:36with a PC and letting them try to carry bing-bong to the top of the peak. In more common
04:40terms,
04:40I see slop used to describe things on the internet like Italian brain rot images or generally AI images
04:46in generated content. So it's unusual for a game to be branded as slop in a positive way when so
04:51many of the connotations tend to be more negative. While I was looking into the term friend-slop as a
04:56whole and seeing what people had to say about its uses, a lot of the time it just referred to
05:01games
05:01that were trendy or streamer bait, which are both definitely more positive terms than slop.
05:09This is where my problem with friend-slop really lies. To me, it just feels quite negative, which is
05:16contradicting when used as a way to describe some of the biggest multiplayer games from this year,
05:21let alone the launches from previous years which are being pulled in now. I have absolutely loved
05:26getting to explore some of these games with friends who don't usually play, just because things like
05:31Peak and Repo feel that little bit more accessible than something like Overcooked or, I don't know,
05:35Fall Guys. It feels wrong to brand them as friend-slop when they are so far from slop and even
05:41though they
05:41can occasionally be a little rough around the edges, I still find myself coming back time and
05:46time again to keep playing. At the end of the day, there will always be a word that the internet
05:50comes
05:51up with which just sounds and feels horrendous to say. I don't disagree that there has been a
05:56significant increase in these goofy physics-based co-op games this year in particular, but I do also
06:02believe that there are probably much more charming ways to describe them than slop. For the time being
06:07though, I'm probably going to have to get used to grimacing every time I hear it said. If you have
06:12any ideas on how we can branch away from the term friend-slop in 2026, then be sure to drop
06:16a comment
06:17below and subscribe to PC Gamer if you'd like to see another video like this where I try and wrap
06:22my
06:22brain around another word coined by the internet. Bye!
06:266-7-Way! 6-7!
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