Christian sends in this comic, which is a new one for me. “Y’all need submissions… and I like visiting, so here’s a webcomic that I frequently enjoy even when I have little clue as to what any of it is about…. and the paragraphs of commentary that accompany each comic often don’t help… not because the jokes are flawed (although sometimes they are … and sometimes on purpose…?) … but because these comics are usually about video game culture/industry/playing… and the last time I was able to be not awful at a video game was when the controls were up, down, let, right, shoot.”
This one is a vocabulary lesson.
“Friendslop is a slang word, used to describe a subgenre of cooperative indie games oriented around a low barrier of entry and social interaction, emphasizing gameplay in social groups … Common elements of friendslop games include a low entry difficulty, frequently described in relation to Bushnell’s Law, that allows people of any gaming skill to participate, and a focus on social interaction. Usually these games will feature a team working towards a common goal, such as climbing a mountain in Peak“ (Wikipedia)
I’ve been reading Penny Arcade for close to 30 years now (which… that’s insane). It’s blocked at work, so I have to remember to look it up at home rather than in my daily comics run.
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One thing to be aware of when reading Penny Arcade is that they often leverage the artwork for charity. You’ll see odd things in the art sometimes, like there might randomly be a cat fairy in the foreground with no explanation. That’s because someone paid Child’s Play a lot of money,
They do occasionally go into Arlo material. They’ve gotten more subtle since they started Arloing out their own kids but, for example, they still have a fruit juicer that, um, takes pleasure in providing juice and needs a little rest afterwards.
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I can follow the dialogue, but had to re-read a few words(like ‘friendslop’) because of the font.
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It’s been years since I last saw Penny Arcade (not deliberate, just kinda forgot about it). Honestly, though, that font is guaranteed eyestrain.
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So basically, frendslop is a game like golf or bowling?
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I suppose that these could be understandable and even fun for people who live in that world. I suppose.
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I enjoy coleslaw, as long as it doesn’t have onions. I sent a group text to the family that said: “I found my peeps r/onionhate”
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I mean no disrespect, but how is it possible not to understand any of those? Especially the movie production one is so transparent, but all of them just require … I don’t know, general understanding of culture?
The Asmongold one requires you know that Twitch will ban streamers apparently at random and without clear or believable explanation. I know nothing about the creator they’re referencing, but it’s a jokey insult about his appearance, a joke that Twitch wouldn’t ban a stream type that brings in money for them, and another deliberately bizarre and ridiculous speculation about his obviously being banned for doing black magic (since there is literally no way to know why it actually happened).
The friendslop one used jargon I had never run into, but I figured it out because I knew about what call “cooperative games”, ones that don’t emphasize competition. A few YouTubers that I follow are both younger than me and gamers, I picked it up from them, I think.
The Supergirl one is just a joke about movie producers focusing entirely on the bottom line. That joke is older than me.
The thing about Anthropic isn’t hard to understand, it’s just not funny. Anthropic is doing something atrocious and should be immediately nationalized and dissolved.
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Carl, need I be ashamed to say I have never used/played/seen Twitch? The closest I have come is maybe viewing the occasional clip on YouTube or Facebook which notes that it was originally recorded on Twitch.
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Mitch4, you know more about Twitch than I do. I never heard of it until now, (at least to a point that it would have lodged in my brain.) Can’t say I knew about “cooperative games” either. I used to follow Penny Arcade in the far distant past, but gave up because 90% of the material was outside my frame of reference. I actually understood 50% of the comics submitted above, so that’s something,
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Mitch4 (9) and guero (10): consider your comments liked.
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