No More Fishing In RPGs, Please
Fishing for fishies in games used to be fun for the last decade and some, but now it's about time we've had a break.
For some time now, I have the impression that no matter what game I pick up, the gameplay at some point, instead of being fun, forces me to work – most often as a farmer or as a fisherman, but there are pleasant exceptions. Don't get me wrong, I know that a significant number of players enjoy fishing, and I'm very glad that at least you are taking advantage of this trend, but it's hard not to notice that these topics are incredibly common lately.
I'm not talking about games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, which are entirely built around this type of activity – I forgive those and retract the accusation of repeatable motifs. I was led to think by Persona 4 Golden, in which, as a high school student who saves the world in the meantime, I fished in a nearby river and gardened. Then it came to me that, in fact, I was doing the same thing in a million different games. Here I was a busy high school student, elsewhere a fast hedgehog, sometimes a goddess in a dog's body, and sometimes an android with a blindfold. And guess what? I was fishing every time. How much is too much?
High frequency
I could come, stomp my foot, announce that fishing and its similar activities are too much, and just leave you with this thought. Zero substantive content here, zero understanding for the opinion that everyone likes something different – instead, a whole load of my frustration. I sat down, put aside my experiences and delved into the topic while analyzing data that didn't surprise me at all. I've looked at the best-rated titles in specific genres according to Metacritic from the last five years. I reviewed only games released for PC and limited my fishy investigation to RPGs and adventure games, recognizing that these are probably the most universal genres, and each has a huge audience base. I chose the top 10 from each of them, considering only game released since 2017.
It turns out that among 10 RPG titles, in seven of them we can find a mini-game with fishing or an entire, extensive fishing mechanic, and in some we can also handle farming. That's 70% of the top RPGs; it looks like angling fanaticism is developing more vigorously in video games than it ever has done in real life. Of course, a mere ten titles is a fairly narrow sample of the mass amount of games that flood into Steam every year, so a similar statistic for, let's say, a hundred titles might look a little different. However, I find it hard to believe that RPGs using the fishing theme are a significant minority.
For adventure games, we can't say too much in terms of similar analysis. None among the major games of the last year, has a fishing or farming feature. The exception is Subnautica, where, because of the theme, fish do appear and we can actually catch them, but it has little to do with the common fishing.
What do we need the fish for?
I've already discovered that the scale of the fish phenomenon in games (especially RPGs) is just as big, if not bigger, than I thought based on personal experiences, but this didn't satisfy my curiosity. I'm sick of it and another fishy mini-game has the same effect on me as the extremely difficult bosses on most players: I just feel I'm gonna throw the controller away. However, since this mechanic is so common, it must have something that captivates players, right?
The simplest explanation is "laziness" of the developers, which I call it, of course, in a simplified way. Using established, popular solutions, using already-ready mechanics and adapting them to the game you're developing. As a result, in modern titles we have a map with easy-to-read markers, convenient quest logs or increasingly more frequent (even minor) decisions that have an impact on the plot. But when it comes to this recycling of mechanics, it's difficult to miss the big difference between a map framework concept and something as specific as fishing. The first is a base element of the RPG game, second is a specific mechanic thrown into this genre.
Yet we find this one particular theme in so many games. Various researchers – psychologists, philosophers, and of course game developers – theorize on the mentioned topic.<br> While searching for reasons why fishing mini-games are so widely popular, they give many different reasons. At the same time, all of them are just theses without the possibility of 100% verification. The frequent occurrence of fishing in RPGs may result, among other things from:
- The popularity of mini-games overall, especially among Japanese players;
- The need for a moment to breathe during an intense game;
- the phenomenon of loot boxes / gacha – we never know what we'll catch;
- attempts to create a realistic world by making the lakes and rivers in the game functional;
- developers curiosity about the universality of this mechanic and the need to implement it in their own way ("since everyone else is doing it, I'll do it too").
All this is as clear as can be, although even taken together it doesn't provide a specific answer to question why this global love of fishing between quests has reached such enormous proportions. Unfortunately, such an immeasurable phenomenon will probably always remain somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Please, don't make me fish anymore.
I see the scale of the phenomenon, I understand the reasons for its popularity, but as a player I am just a bit tired. The further in, the more fish; they're in every other title, and you get the feeling that instead of a bit of freshness, you're getting a reheated... filet, because it's hard to talk about a chop here. For fishing enthusiasts, this is probably the best time to fulfil themselves as players, because they can find this mechanic with ease. There are quite a few threads on the web about on which game we can fish. If it turns out that it's not possible, players often decide to reach for something else.
However, the others, who are far from being fishing fanatics, are slowly getting enough; I'm slowly getting enough. Fortunately, an analysis of the reasons for this phenomenon allows us to notice that exactly the same reasons may one day give rise to a completely different mechanics, which creators will use in every title and which will replace fishing. Maybe soon in numerous RPGs we will be playing mah-jongg like in Ryu Ga Gotoku productions? Maybe we will be flying on dragons or other birds like in the latest Fire Emblem or picking locks like in Skyrim? Whatever it is, let it come already. The fishing era has really lasted too long. Maybe it's time to make way for something new?
