What was the first instance of a friendslop game? Was it REPO? Human: Fall Flat? Or perhaps it was the first time a group of people tried to guess what someone was saying in what we would now call a game of charades? The name friendslop may be a recent development, but at its core messing around with a group of friends has been one of the oldest ways to socialise. Take Jackbox Games for example.

"We're kind of friendslop in a way," CEO of Jackbox Games, Mike Bilder, tells our Ted Litchfield in a recent interview. With senior software engineer Michael Siciliano adding: "We've just been around so much longer than the term that it feels strange to retroactively [claim it]."

Now, I don't think Jackbox Games goes as far back as the 16th-century origins of charades, but it has been around for a while after its rebrand in 2013, with games like Fibbage and Lie Swatter being over a decade old.

"A lot of our games are just casual with a bunch of friends, and you're drawing ridiculous things trying to make each other laugh, and that's a lot of the impetus of those friendslop games," Bilder adds. "So we don't take issue with it, and I don't think it's necessarily a negative moniker in any way. If anything, it's a bit encouraging.

"You see what's happening in AAA, you see what's happening in the industry at large, and then you see this rise of an indie scene, you see the rise of this kind of category of friendslop and people wanting to play together.

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