“Friendslop” Sounds Like An Insult. What Do Developers Think?

There's an ongoing divide about the word "friendslop." The genre descriptor, born of games like Lethal Company, Peak, and many others in recent years, can be used in both positive and negative contexts, which can make it confusing. Personally, I was trying to reserve the "-slop" suffix for things made by generative AI, but the term has broken containment and is now used widely in conversations about co-op games of a particular type: light on mechanics, welcoming to a wide array of skill levels, and heavy on the opportunity for social hijinks and proximity chat-based laughs, friendslop games aren't going anywhere. But should we be calling them that? Do the teams making such games find it demeaning? I recently spoke to a handful of studios making games in this vein, and for the most part, they actually seemed okay with it. However, the sentiments they shared with me often had an air of acceptance rather than excitement. "Once the kids are using it, I think you have to just go with it," Developer Mike Boxleiter told me earlier this summer when I first demoed Lazy River, his co-op game about building a raft to survive a water park overrun by zombified patrons. The "kids," I took him t…