Friendslop

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There’s a sentiment in multiplayer game design that I hear all the time:

“Are people enjoying my game because the game is well designed, or because it’s multiplayer?”

And what I want to ask in this piece is: “What’s up with that?”

Surface Level

At a first glance, if it is to be a useful term, Friendslop must refer to shovelware designed specifically to be played with friends. The epitome of “this is fun only because my friends are here.” Games put out with a couple months of devtime, those of negligible critical value. A carnival game with flashy lights and a monkey or a forgotten tik tok video.

As game designers, we can take a look at this perspective and note this phenomenon, as we surely wish to create good games and good designs, without leaning on the multiplayer element to keep our designs enjoyable or worthwhile.

I will stop beating around the bush. While not without some merit, I believe this line of questioning is a lie based on false premises. To tell you why, let’s talk about virtual worlds.

Virtual Worlds and Sociology

A virtual world is a distinct artifact from a video game. Video games may exist within virtual worlds, but notably a virtual world can exist containing no video games. Taking a look at VR Chat, many of its worlds are plain virtual worlds, serving as an environment for people to hang out, playing no games, past the ones that define our social interactions…

But they are games, are they not?

There exists a sociological concept known as Dramaturgy that posits that social interactions exist as a sort of role playing game. For example, one can exist as a friend in one interaction, and an employee in another. If you’ve ever seen those memes where you “use personality A with friend group B” these are exactly this concept.

Design intentions

I point this out, as I want to underscore that when we design a multiplayer game, we are inherently in conversation with this extant social game. In other words, once you add multiplayer* to your design, your design and its mechanics are no longer the sole systems of your game. You must think of multiplayer’s additional mechanical complexity and its effects on your design as a part of a whole, rather than just an independent element, or worse not one at all.

Your design is not “good” or “bad” independent of multiplayer elements because your design must be inherently, inextricably multiplayer. Removal of that multiplayer creates an entirely separate game.

*: One could argue social influence also impacts the way people play single player games, and I completely agree, but NOT YET FERB

Friendslop

I dislike the term Friendslop. I believe that the phenomenon it refers to is real; Small gimmicky games designed to provide cursory entertainment value are indeed all the rage these days. However, I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing.

I like the idea of encouraging people to get together and have an excuse to try something new with their friends. I’d rather people play a badly designed indie for a few hours of fun with people they care about, than another 83 rounds of <insert AAA live service game here>, or games with multiplayer haphazardly bolted on (hi minecraft [I will die on this hill]).

And even better, if this trend continues, we’ll get more genuine designs that attempt to connect people, and genuinely converse with their social element in a fascinating and educational way. (Go play big walk do it now i am hypnotizing you ooooooo)

We don’t have enough video games that attempt to design around social activity. Games that foster relationships and build community. This is exactly what I want cabin to be, and I desperately want more of these designs in the world.