Welcome back, everyone!
I am extremely pleased to present to you the entrants in the Blogs of the Round Table “Friendslop” Essay Jam—all twenty-four of them! This has been an incredible turnout for a jam that was really just meant to put out feelers for future, non-jam editions of this feature. Thank you all for showing up, showing out, and showing us the power of focused and directed criticism. I can’t yap for too long, though, because it’s time to get into the reading—and there is so much to read! Enjoy these pieces on “friendslop” from incredible critics from around the world.
Beware Microgenre Names Bearing Gifts
Our first entry into the jam, from our very own Zach Alexander, asks us to consider the danger of etymological carelessness. It is seductively easy to allow a term like “Friendslop” to dictate our understanding of games today, but what long-term damage might it cause?
Friendslop = Friendless<<Slop>> Or: Will We Ever Lock Eyes When We Play Again?
Luis Aguasvivas turns a critical eye towards friendslop as a vibe and also a consequence of a general gamespace that does not wish for us to really come together, reminding us that actual friendship requires actual effort, both offline and on.
We Liked Your Vibe From Across The Buffet
On Medium, Tim Shanholtzer ruminates on the tension between playing poorly with friends, playing better alone but finding it unsatisfying, and playing alone, with strangers, whose judgement you simply can’t be assed to care about.
Can You Enjoy “Friendslop” Games Without Friends?
In our first YouTube-based submission, essayist The Cowardly Valiant looks at three prominent friendslop titles, Lethal Company, REPO and Content Warning, and sets out to see what their public servers are like.
PEAK is a Sport: How PEAK revived my love of climbing
Penny plays PEAK and rekindles a spark for rock climbing that has been missing for a long time.
Big Walk is “Friend Dinner”
Our second YouTube entry examines the qualitative ways in which House House’s Big Walk stands apart as a whole other kind of meal to typical friendslop games.
losing my grip
Ashley Schofield processes love and loss through PEAK‘s demands for teamwork and the certainty that said teamwork will fail.
Embrace Your Friendslop/A Friendslop Theory
Two essays from Finn Carney break friendslop down to its molecular structure and identify the ways in which it differs from other, similar (some might say “better”) genre descriptors—and how we relate to genres on the whole.
Who Is “Friendslop” For?
Wallace Truesdale takes us through his process of wrestling with friendslop before coming to the conclusion that it’s a term with empty calories, less than a marketing term and more something to merely react to.
Friendslop as Experience
Jennings Collins searches for the phenomenology of friendslop, and determines that “friends” are its most important ingredient.
Slop
Taylor Hidalgo embraces the inherent ludic imperfections at the heart of friendslop.
The Jank Is The Point
J.M. Henson hearkens back to an earlier derogatory/laudatory term, Jank, to complicate our understanding of and relationship to friendslop.
“Slop” and the Search for Meaning
Bee Sprawlbug goes long on slop, prestige, meaning-making, object vs. relation, and what cruel and horrifying metamorphosis takes place when the subject is fed all slop and no prestige for eons without end.
Everyone I Know Agrees With Me
Jake Steinberg examines the discursive enclosures we sit in – and dip out of – when we talk about the ethics of calling games friendslop.
Learning “How to Fish,” Badly, With Guns
Spencer Johnson reviews How To Fish, a game which slops it up quite satisfyingly with its myriad non-fishing-pole methods of catching aquatic animals.
There’s No Bite. It Goes Down Easy.
Nicanor Gordon shares his experiences of gaming with his loved ones during the pandemic, and how holding onto those tenuous-at-times connections has evolved as the years have gone by.
Where we are is horrible steep
Megan O’Neill combines poetry, improv, Shakespeare’s tragedies, and TTRPGs in a critique of friendslop and the systems that market it.
Carry the Glass and the Impossible Task of Parenting
Nate Schmidt learns valuable parenting lessons from playing a particularly tricky friendslop game.
To Journey With Friends
Rob Haines remarks on the sorry state of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered, a game which could have benefitted from a little friendslop.
“Friendslop” Reminds us that Gaming Should be Fun First
Timm weighs which experience is more valuable: the AAA-level, “polished” misery of trying to dial in the settings of a game like Battlefield 6, or the joys of hopping into a friendslop game like PEAK?
Chasing Ghosts in Empty Rooms
Will Borger reaches back to the arcade years to make the point that what we have classified as friendslop isn’t new, but is being made as a reaction to reductions in things like third spaces.
Holding Onto Our Friends’lop
Cind rejects the whole premise and substitutes it with bunnies.
Is Friendslop Cringe?
Snow Guard applies post-Hegelian dialectics to “cringe,” “friendslop” and, by extension, gamers’ shame culture.
What is a friend to a game – about “Big Walk” (JP)
Japanese author Shu Chiba invokes Rebecca Solnit in examining what Big Walk provokes: how strong are your friendships? Are you sure?