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the only show about video games. @frankcifaldi.bsky.social, @adashtra.bsky.social, @brandon.insertcredit.com & host @alexjaffe.bsky.social.

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here's what people in the forums think:

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Taliesin_Merlin says, I have ventured deep into the friendslop perhaps because I was playing similar games before friendslop was a term. Not all of them, obviously (no time for that), but enough that after listening to the slop discussion I went through my Steam library to catalogue my journey in the friends-play-games-together genre. Then I brainstormed a list of key concepts I see related to friendslop. My underlying claim is that what we call friendslop has existed in its component parts since at least the indie boom,in an undercurrent of multiplayer-focused experiences whose threads came together sometime after Among Us and Phasmophobia.

andrewelmore says, I feel like “friendslop” sorta comes from the same place as like, “eurojank”, but zoomery. The difference though is that “slop” has a specific connotation now with Computer Media that denotes a sense of junk food guilt that sort of inherently puts an expiration date on the genre by making it explicitly a Trend instead. I feel like odds are, either some new thing comes out that blows up out of nowhere and pivots into something else, or we never hear about a game called (something)-Crew again.
it’s not a term of endearment you apply to games as a social experience, it’s “single digit player count with some kind of vague collective goal and proximity chat that will run on a toaster. you can get your stoned coworkers to play it with you so they play something other than stardew or fortnite for a few weeks.”

Girard says, I think there’s a generational thing going on here re: reading the word slop as mean. It feels like it’s part of a language trend among younger Zoomers and gen alpha kids (brain rot, sludge content, friend slop) that is reclaiming language used to denigrate unproductive activity, but using it in a positive way?

I’m an old Xennial, so it runs me the wrong way, but I stop short of complaining about it because I worry I’m like one of those old-timers saying “I don’t think this groove is ‘wicked,’ ‘bad,’ or ‘gnarly’! In fact I think it’s quite well done!”

chazmaru says, Great stuff.

It resembles (and streamlines!) a similar presentation I have been brainstorming during the holiday break to explain the significance of Peak and why I thought it was the game of the year to my perplexed colleagues who had eyes for more traditional console experiences and/or the budget-effective production notes of Expedition 33.

There’s something to dig further about the manifestation of social gaming spaces, wherein a previous generation (cf. the TV show Community) used to create gaming spaces within physical locations – turning a bedroom or living room into a different world, creating the constraint that the floor is lava etc. – that would be echoed in physical gaming networks : from two players being connected to the same game console through the wires of their controllers, to acquaintances bring their PC towers to LAN parties, to the appropriation of third spaces in the mid-2000s Japan with ad-hoc Monster Hunter on PSP and Streetpass (which truly started with Dragon Quest IX and Nintendogs on the DS being being systemized on the Nintendo 3DS).

Progressively, as the masses are losing the economic battle for an access to the proverbial but less and less realistic “living room”, and younger generations are prohibited (either by society’s changes, modern times pandemics or their own parents’ fears) from accessing traditional social spaces, we have been digitalizing the access to social gaming spaces from being exogenous to endogenous (i.e. it is not the social space that gives access to the game, but the game that gives access to the social space).

Thinking about the future which was promised to us about ten years ago, I think there is also some (superficial?) relation between this transformation, the relative failure of VR (“my living room can become anywhere”) and conversely the success of the Switch concept (“anywhere can become my living room”) into reappropriating physical social spaces within the constraints and opportunities o…

January 9, 2026 at 5:36 PM

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You have to scroll to see the expensive one for some reason. thanks patreon!

January 7, 2026 at 7:09 PM

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Nice

January 4, 2026 at 4:57 AM

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thanks for listening and watching!! and hanging out on forums.insertcredit.com !! and subscribing at patreon.com/insertcredit !! and sharing the show on here!! we're gonna keep doing it in 2026 and already have some cool ideas

December 31, 2025 at 8:47 PM