Webfishing
The 17th of January, 2025
Webfishing (and why it's fun)
Recently, I got Webfishing, and I was astounded by how fun it is despite how simple the gameplay can be. I think the reason Webfishing is so fun is because it’s a breath of fresh air for the 2025 game industry.
What makes Webfishing a breath of fresh air?
Webfishing is a social game! We live in an era of hyperconnectivity, but it seems many of these avenues have sacrificed their ability to facilitate social interaction for some other benefit to the platformer holder. You can see this in the corpoweb space often, since all the sites have prioritized advertising and engagement over finding real connections. How does this relate to games, though?

In general, it seems that games are MORE online now but LESS social.
I think this can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, console platforms have really cracked down on moderation these days. When I was a teen, it was common to go on Xbox 360 and make friends in the lobbies and jump into other games together. At the time, the voice chat features were relatively new, and every Xbox shipped with a little headset mic. Everyone voice chatted, and moderation was sparse. These days, they are extremely strict about moderating voice chat (probably for a good reason), and headsets are an extra 50-100 dollar purchase. As a result, console games simply don’t do voice chat anymore. With Switch shipping without the ability to do it at all!
The other big factor as to why games feel less social these days is… eSports. It seems like every big and popular multiplayer game is competitive now. Have a look at Steam’s most played.

This is really cool if you like competitive gaming, but this really steers the direction of social interaction in these games. It’s very hard to find a casual online experience these days because most games focus on the competitive nature of the gameplay rather than making friends and having fun.
You’ve yapped a lot, but what does any of this have to do with Webfishing?
Webfishing is very fresh because it’s a game that’s in the style of millennial games but in the modern era. Games people my age grew up with like RuneScape, Gaia, or Habbo Hotel, for example. It’s so exciting because it’s a pre-esports-esque game in the modern era, and for that reason, I can’t put it down.
Let’s hope this is simply the beginning of the trend, and we’ll see more games in this vein soon.
