friendfarmers

King of Posters
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saw this tweet and while it’s cringe i do like thinking up new niche genres and reasoning out what their definition is to me. to be clear the person who posted this did so as a joke.

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they later went on to post a tierlist that has some games that i wouldn’t consider “friendfarmers”, which is what got me thinking about where the lines of this completely arbitrary genre are drawn for me.

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i don’t think league, barotrauma, terraria, or minecraft are friendfarmers.

here’s my rough definition:

  • unplayable without multiple people who ideally all know each other (if there is a solo mode, it’s not really fun or worth engaging with)
  • friend socialization is where the “content” comes from. mechanical depth is detrimental to the experience. goals need to be a light touch and cooperation should not be strictly required
  • (optional) comedy-focused; the enjoyment comes from seeing the misfortune of your friends or laughing at inside jokes

games i would consider “friendfarmers” include lethal-likes (lethal company, headliners), freeform sandboxes and rp (gmod, dark rp), and party games (gartic phone, jackbox). the card games apples to apples or cards against humanity are classic friendfarmer tabletop games.

areas i’m unsure on are social deception games and survival crafters. is amogus a friendfarmer? valheim?

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i like how they’ve made social games sound like something evil

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Do they have to be online? Is couch co-op in scope?

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I don’t think they have to be online personally; couch play is definitely in-scope (Jackbox is, after all, best played with people in the same room)

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5

this is the stuff

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streamerbait for groups is probably the most cynical description i can come up

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streamerbait is how i think of most of these, since i mainly only know of them from vtuber clips

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me playing a friendfarmer

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It’s weird to me that gmod is even considered in the same universe as the rest of these. Like it’s completely playable and fun alone. It’s a creative thing.

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minecraft and terraria are fine single player. league of legends is an enemyfarmer

barotrauma is also an enemyfarmer

teg can you make your own tier list since your criteria is different than the tweets, I’m interested

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what the fuck is “friendfarmer” even supposed to mean like it doesn’t seem very descriptive in any helpful kind of way. how does one farm friends playing a videogame. i really dont get it

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ride playing ff11 is like the truest friend farming i can think of. like the way she didnt care about the people she was partying up with at all she just needed the most efficent no life people to farm stuff with

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the person who made that tweet is jealous they don’t have friends to play videogames with

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14

But … where’s Tuxcraft and Tux-League?

:tarothink:

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15

j/k answer is:

Infinite Tuxxi is the definitive answer :smirk:

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Arma is a friendfarmer

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Mario Party

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Sea of Thieves might qualify.

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I think it rides on the edge for me, but I ruled out “multicrew” games (Sea of Thieves, Barotrauma, Void Crew) personally because they are too mechanically involved. A friendfarmer (to me) needs a minimal / light touch on its mechanics; coordination is antithetical to the genre because it reduces the potential for, as loki and daphny put it, “streamerbaiting”.

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The only arma thing that meets these criteria is the custom [insert terrain here] Life RP gamemodes, which are still mechanically involved…

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