2025 was the year of friendslop: bite-sized, inexpensive games that center co-op and proximity voice chat as vehicles for silliness, scares, and slapstick. One of the genre’s biggest smash hits, Peak, is a poster child for the slightly maligned, kind of derogatory label. But in an interview at GDC, Aggro Crab studio head Nick Kaman told PC Gamer associate editor Ted Litchfield he had a question for players and developers who are sour on the term. “Why not?”
“It’s fun. It’s technically derogatory. But why not lean into that? Because that’s what people are saying,” Kaman said. “Even if it is kind of mean, I can take it.”
He said it’s useful as a developer to have a term that serves as a lightning rod for discourse, even if some of the talk is negative. He brought up examples like metroidvania, souls, boomer shooter, and wholesome, all of which are the subject of debate online. (I’d also submit “bullet heaven,” which has really got people in a tizzy lately.)
Whether the term is particularly respectful comes second to the fact that “we didn’t have a label for this type of game before,” Kaman said—and even if it is used in a pejorative way, Kaman said that he “[gets] where those people are coming from.”
“The original tweet said, ‘friendfarming,’ right? It’s less of an experience on its own and more of a scaffold for you to hang out with your friends. But what’s more beautiful than that,” he said. “Why not make a game where the point is to hang out with your friends? Isn’t that kind of what a lot of games are about? These are games that just focus on that and make mechanical choices that encourage that behavior.”
He went on to argue that Peak succeeds, in part, because of its social aspect and that was no mistake. “When you get to the peak, and you only got there because your friends helped. That’s a pretty good feeling. A lot of people just tell me this: that they’ve rekindled relationships, friendships through playing this game. I think that’s exciting.”
Kaman also said the “vibe shift” that led to friendslop’s dominance “probably started with COVID.” Isolated people who may not have monster rigs at the ready wanted a way to socialize with their friends via gaming, so they all got hooked on Among Us and things took off from there with games like Lethal Company and Peak. But he’s not sure the genre’s heyday is over just yet.
“I think there’s a lot of design space in friendslop that hasn’t been explored. And I want to see other developers’ takes on it, and have them see success with that.” If the sizable sales numbers put up by Gamble With Your Friends earlier this month are any indication, it’s certainly true that friendslop ain’t dead just yet.
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