(The tl;dr video companion to this article):

My article from yesterday helped to detail my ongoing machinations in trying to expand the reach of what Active Time Event can provide, something I’ve been working on for a little while now, as I’ve been making video content alongside my articles since last December. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it would benefit the site to not just post the extraneous vid content on social media, but also just embed the material directly into the articles, so as to maybe give more context to the tonality of what I was speaking on, but also to inform, entertain, provoke curiosity etc. I think the whole experiment has been exceedingly well, and I look forward to what the new range of voluminous variety of entertainment on hand may do for ATE in the long run, of which of course involves your continued support as a reader, and whom I appreciate quite thoroughly.

With all of that said, the video I will be extrapolating briefly on today is about Wobbly Life, and asks the important question “Is Slopmaxxing the Junk Food of Video Games?” For those unfamiliar, maxxing is just recent slang involving doing something to a ridiculous degree, in an effort to maximize ones effort in succeeding within said context, and for those of you totally out of the loop, slop is usually a reference point to content that is of low quality, or quite minimal in inherent value, and produced rather quickly for the sake of cheap entertainment. The phrase slop was initially (and in some cases) still does imply the use of AI, but the phrase has continued to evolve to the point where AI is not necessarily involved with the creation of slop, today’s example being among them.

The inquiry was initially kickstarted while playing a recently added PlayStation Plus title, Wobbly Life, which is basically a super silly version of GTA, where one can explore an open world in a city, and one can engage in all kinds of activities, like missions, races, jobs, buying, collecting, exploring, stealing cars, etc. One can play it by ones lonesome, and its still great fun, but it is multiplayer oriented, as up to four people can play at once, and do to the games simplistic nature, and intentionally awkward control design, seems to have been intended as a game that would fall under the monogram as “friendslop”, a genre of video game that deals with cheaply made multiplayer experiences, usually in the hopes it will catch on with streams and online sharing, due to the hilarity and shenanigans that ensue when a bunch of people get together to enjoy the chaos as a group.

However, during some contemplative moments of mine, I pondered on whether or not people view the term slop, and to a greater extend, “insert-word-here-slop”, as inherently offensive as a point of reference, and use the term slop as a pejorative in a sense, to describe something that is lesser than or beneath or styles of game. Or, alternatively, whether or not the term slop (and to this current point, friendslop), is more in the vein of linguistic laziness/slash throw away wordplay, in how we refer to snacks as junk food, in the sense that while the food isn’t healthy or good for one, we do all love consuming it, and the context of junk food isn’t truly an inflammatory comment towards what are delicious albeit low grade food options, and equally so, doesn’t implicate one who partakes in said junk food as a lesser than individual, or as making fun of them in a “you are what you eat” kind of way, by trying to remind them they are literal garbage people for what they are consuming.

I think my interest is more solely on the evolution of language, the partiality of slang, the dimensionality of communication, and the spectrum of understanding all humans operate on, as there are likely as many perspectives on what “slop” actually is or defined as, as there are people who are aware of the phenomenon and have formed an opinion on said happening. To that point, I was considering, and perhaps maybe in a slightly melodramatic of a fashion on some level, if a developer or devs in general, are comfortable with that moniker too, as it is possible there are devs who are newer to the industry, or only have so much time and resource to spare, pour their hearts into a game, think it to be quite good and some quiant little fun, but then have their pride shattered when they hear the community refer to it in such a low brow kind of way. I is very possible most devs either don’t take it seriously, or, much like Tommy Wiseau did with audiences reactions to the room, leaned into the fact that people ended up loving it, even if it wasn’t in the way the director initially intended it to be, and then was just delighted that people enjoyed something he made full stop at the end of the day.

Ultimately, and as I said earlier, I doubt there is a singular, unifying answer, and it may be that my analogy of comparing “slop” type games in the vein of how we refer to junk food in a playfully disdainful way, is closer to the truth of the matter in how the whole crux of content is perceived as, and no one is worse for the wear. However, in an online world that is rife with pedantic arguments, from things as silly as asking whether or not a hotdog is a sandwich, to the eternally raging, ideologically driven war that involves the “correct” pronunciation of gif, such a philosophically related posit of curiosity such as the slopmaxxing question seems relevant and pertinent, in getting a better understanding of language, the industry, an entire medium, and ourselves, all in the same singular moment of positive curiosity.

Something fun to think about, at the very least. Thanks for stopping by.

~Pashford