{"id":568190,"date":"2026-03-27T17:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/568190\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:01:08","slug":"not-everything-is-slop-and-we-need-to-keep-it-that-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/568190\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Everything Is Slop, and We Need to Keep It That Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I watched the Xbox Partner Preview<\/a> earlier today, one word stuck out to me more than any of the games shown: slop. It was repeated over and over in the stream\u2019s accompanying chat, denigrating every game that was featured in the showcase, regardless of perceived quality. <\/p>\n

The horror-tinged farming sim Grave Seasons<\/a> was deemed \u201ccozyslop.\u201d RGG\u2019s multi-decade street brawler Stranger Than Heaven<\/a> was \u201chistoryslop.\u201d Super Meat Boy 3D<\/a> was \u201cmeatslop.\u201d The goofy co-op puzzle-platformer Frog Sqwad<\/a> was of course branded \u201cfrogslop,\u201d while The Eternal Life of Goldman<\/a> was either \u201ccupheadslop\u201d after, apparently, the only other 2D platformer that exists, or just \u201cslopslop.\u201d By the end of the stream, the whole showcase was dubbed \u201cMicroslop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m well aware that the live chat during game showcases has never been a particularly positive place. And to be clear, none of the games shown today deserved the \u201c-slop\u201d moniker, for reasons I\u2019ll explain shortly. But the over and misuse of the term highlighted a larger problem: Everything is considered slop now, and that\u2019s not a good thing. <\/p>\n

Just What Is Slop Anyway?<\/p>\n

In modern parlance, \u201cslop\u201d has come to be an extremely apt term used to describe anything spit out by generative AI. Glossy, uncanny faces, garbled text, masses of extraneous fingers and limbs<\/a>, memes in the style of Studio Ghibli<\/a> \u2013 anyone who uses the internet or social media with any regularity has had to grow accustomed to a cavalcade of low-quality images and videos churned out for quick engagement<\/a> or, worse, deliberate misinformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Games are not immune to slop either. Last year, my colleague Reb reported on the murky world of Cert<\/a>, highlighting how some digital game stores \u2013 the Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store, in particular \u2013 were overrun with slop. \u201cI could make \u2018Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game\u2019 and maybe it would eventually get taken down,\u201d one developer said in her report, speaking about how poor those platforms are at policing low-quality content. Nintendo has had problems with shovelware clogging up the eShop dating back to the DS days, but the advent of generative AI has made the problem all the more worse, and slop is the perfect successor to the \u201cshovelware\u201d descriptor.<\/p>\n

As social media feeds have become increasingly choked by slop, the public sentiment on generative AI has shifted from curiosity and excitement to burnt out and fed up. Nvidia\u2019s recent announcement of DLSS 5<\/a> and its \u201cyassified\u201d faces was met with skepticism and outrage<\/a>, and now even the hint of AI usage in a game sparks backlash, leading to situations like Larian CEO having to do damage control<\/a> after some pro-AI comments, or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being stripped of two awards<\/a> after it came out that gen AI was used during development. Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claims he doesn\u2019t love AI slop himself<\/a>, as if we\u2019re not all trying to find the guy who did this<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Slop Has Meaning \u2013 Don\u2019t Take That Away<\/p>\n

The one place where \u201cslop\u201d isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing is the term \u201cfriendslop,\u201d a somewhat pejorative but also often self-proclaimed term for the kind of trendy \u201cflavor of the month\u201d multiplayer games that will take friend groups and concurrent player charts by storm, only to drop back in popularity as quickly as they came. Among Us is perhaps the godfather of the \u201cgenre\u201d (if you even want to call it a genre), but games like Lethal Company, Phasmophobia, Peak, and R.E.P.O fit the bill here. They\u2019re not always low quality, but many are, often launching under the shield of Early Access to account for a lack of content, features, or polish. Importantly, said lack of polish doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they\u2019re bad games or not fun \u2013 after all, there\u2019s a reason they gain viral popularity in the first place. <\/p>\n

This brings us back to the March Xbox Partner Preview. As I saw the \u201c-slop\u201d suffix thrown onto more and more games, I think it\u2019s critical to draw a line in the sand. Not everything is slop, and overusing the term detracts from its power. <\/p>\n

For one thing, calling a game \u201cslop\u201d is insulting to the talented game developers who aren\u2019t using AI to develop their games. Admittedly, I haven\u2019t personally verified that every single game shown during the Xbox showcase is 100% free from AI \u2013 and if that turns out to not be the case for one game or another, then by all means brand it as slop \u2013 but throwing the word around, even as a joke or a meme, normalizes the term and takes away its meaning. If everything is slop, then nothing is slop, and I refuse to let that happen. <\/p>\n

Because Slop is the perfect word for AI-generated content, and quite honestly, one of our best weapons against it. As corporations continue to unnecessarily shove AI<\/a> into our technology and lives, seeking a problem for the solution built on the backs of stolen content<\/a>, while guzzling electricity<\/a> and driving up the cost of gaming hardware<\/a> along the way, it\u2019s important that we have a quick, correct descriptor to yoke upon their garbage. Simply tagging or watermarking content as \u201cAI-generated\u201d isn\u2019t enough. It\u2019s slop, and it should have to bear that badge of shame. <\/p>\n

One bright spot in this fight is the announcement earlier this week<\/a> that OpenAI shut down its video slop generator Sora. Good riddance. <\/p>\n

Bo Moore is IGN’s Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As I watched the Xbox Partner Preview earlier today, one word stuck out to me more than any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-568190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}