So, I’ve been around the Stonehearth discourse for a while, and one thing I’ve noticed a ton of is requests for fishing, fisherman classes, etc… The strange thing is, this is not the only game where I’ve been seeing this request; Starbound, Rise to Ruins, and many others that I play have also had a number of people asking for the inclusion of the iconic marine pastime. It seems strange to me, given our media’s tendency to stereotype fishing as tedious and time-wasting (I’m looking at you, “overused time-lapse shot of people with rods waiting on the pier for a nibble”!)–I wouldn’t think it’d be so popular or focused on.
So I wanted to ask people here: What is the deal with fishing? Why does there seem to be this strange obsession with this particular activity/facet of worldbuilding, especially considering that the demand transcends game genres?
(Also, feel free to share other examples of this type of request with other games–I’m curious to see just how many of these situations are out there!)