WEBFISHING, AND THE REBIRTH OF THE DIGITAL "THIRD PLACE"

even for weirdos like me, 2024 has been a surprisingly solid year for video games. Hades II swept in and reignited my slow-cooked love for the original to a roaring boil, Sonic x Shadow Generations affirmed that 2005 is so back while also dishing up some peak performance platforming, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO tickled such a deep corner of my brain that it might still earn a write-up on this site before too long. that's all still within the realm of my rapidly-growing focus on PC gaming, too, and i could still rattle off a few more honorable mention indies like Balatro, or Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, or the impeccably strange Arctic Eggs, so i did rattle them off. with this treasure trove of games, i was ready to kick back and let the normal people argue about, i dunno, Astro Bot or whatever, while i relished my winter months pitting Goku against Goku, but out of nowhere, 2024 delivered one last surprise for me in an unexpected package - WEBFISHING.

WEBFISHING is... i mean, it is a game, but to call it that feels like only half the story. it's a decidely low-key affair, wearing its Animal Crossing inspirations on its sleeve as you take up the role of a low-poly critter, wandering the idyllic late summer liminal space of Pawprint Point and earning big bucks by fishing. it has a very cozy vibe, but i would say it's engaged me much more than a lot of other 'cozy games' - so many times, i think that label leans hard into the aesthetics and winds up lacking in the mechanics, but WEBFISHING is, in fact, fun to play in its own right. the fishing minigame is relatively simple, with a focus on mouse-mashing your way through progressively higher tiers of fish, but it's the type of thing that feels a little meditative without getting overly dull. it also helps that this game has a few other key inspirations weaved into its DNA, with bouncy mushrooms and a Super Mario Odyssey-style dive that make exploring the island feel genuinely pretty fun.

moreover, movement in WEBFISHING feels rewarding. as you would expect, there's a difference between lake fish and ocean fish, but moreso than that, the tightly packed world of Pawprint Point does actually encourage you to get moving. random events like rainclouds and meteors can bring out exciting new varieties of fish, hidden shops reward you with unique items and the feeling of being 'in on' something, and the corners of the island hide a pretty delightful curveball in the form of a scavenger hunt i dare not spoil here. obviously, with any game these days, it's easier than ever to tap into the full extent of knowledge about every nook and cranny, but Pawprint Point brings back fond memories of digital spaces like Isle Delfino, where moving around just feels natural by way of a naturalistic approach to designing the space.

it also helps that there's, in a classical playful sense, a lot of things you can do in WEBFISHING. are they deep mechanics that would form the backbone of a 70-hour RPG? eh, not really, but running around with a metal detector or drinking the soda that makes you big are the types of things you do for their own sake. this is really where the secret sauce of WEBFISHING comes in - the whole game is innately very social. from the moment you boot it up, you are treated to a server list and invited to make a lobby of your own, to the point where i didn't even know you could opt to play solo until i was setting up my own room for some friends. this is the other half of the story - this game is full of cute little emotes that do nothing, and beer you can drink just for fun, and chalk you can draw dicks in the plaza with, because for as much as it's about the fishing, it's also very much about the web.

'chatroom' games like this are an interesting and increasingly rare breed. i feel like you saw a lot of them pop up in the early 2000s, particularly in the form of browser games that could take advantage of computers becoming both common enough and powerful enough to connect lots of people in interactive spaces - i'm at just the right age for Club Penguin to be my frame of reference for this, but some more broadly applicable examples might be Second Life or, i guess in a certain modern niche, maybe VRChat? the early internet was already a huge communication boom, so in some way it made sense to take that a step further and design unique contexts for that socialization beyond just text being sent back and forth.

what you also saw, then, were a lot of games taking lessons from that type of design and applying them to things that had a little more meat on their bones mechanically. i can't say i have any real first-hand experience with this one, especially in the context of it existing alongside the big chatroom games, but World of Warcraft comes to mind, as a game with both defined RPG mechanics and a penchant for fun social flourishes like emotes and outfits. while WoW seems like it's still going strong today, there's also an argument to be made that other games have taken this further. Destiny is a 'looter shooter', yes, but why else does it have a big hub where you can hang out with your buddies instead of just a set of menus? i've fully given up on trying to understand Fortnite, but i think you could see it as a descendant of this design philosophy too, even if it ditched a lot of the social design framework while keeping the part where you buy outfits for your guy.

there's a sociological concept that gets thrown around sometimes in conversations about boring stuff like politics or civil engineering called "the third place", and i think about it a lot. in short and somewhat sloppy terms, it's the idea that you've got your home life, your work life, and... somewhere else. neutral ground that's not necessarily viewed through the lens of your family or your co-workers, although not necessarily excluding them if that happens to be the social circle you find yourself in. the bar in your favorite sitcom, or your local hobby shop, or something like that. i am not an expert in these subjects by any means, so i won't ramble on about them, but it's something i find fascinating, both as someone who has very real first-hand experience with the decline of 'real world' third spaces, and as someone with a lot of skepticism towards how games and social media seem to take on more and more aspects of the second place (work) every year.

so, with all that being said, WEBFISHING feels lovably quaint. it feels - and in many ways, looks - like something i should be running in a browser tab. it's definitely a game, it has mechanics - even ones that encourage a bit of grind and optimization and competition, as you try to complete your encyclopedia and fish up bigger and bigger catches. somehow, it all hits different, though. none of those trappings feel like a treadmill meant to keep me playing WEBFISHING, but rather, an invitation to participate, to step in and zone out and get social while i do some fishing. often times, a quick little "woah, nice catch" to the cool dog on my left is the best way to get a conversation rolling. while there are upgrades for your fishing capabilities available, there's just as many (if not more) things you can buy solely for the sake of making time on Pawprint Point nicer for yourself and others, whether it's picnic blankets or brewskis.

in some sense, i think another point of reference that comes to mind for me - and one that serves as something of a cautionary tale, in some sense? - is Rare's Sea of Thieves. at launch, Sea of Thieves had a lot in common with WEBFISHING, weirdly enough. sure, the scale was bigger and the thematic context was way different, but they shared a similar loop wherein getting loot was, mechanically, mostly just a means to an end. you could get rich and buy a nicer coat, maybe, but the actual thing you took away from playing the game was the social experience of operating a full pirate ship with other people. unfortunately, Sea of Thieves buckled a bit under the weight of first-party prestige, and there was an increasingly loud contingent of its playerbase who wanted a more mainstream approach to things like progression. i can't speak to where the game's at these days, but i remember feeling like a lot of people were missing the point, and most of what i've seen since reinforces that the game has generally trended away from those social roots.

one thing i think that helps illustrate is that there's a lot of very layered factors that set the tone of a chatroom game. a lot of it comes down to intentional design, and that's something that 'lamedev' and other contributing artists have done a really good job with. the previously mentioned world design and the cavalcade of strange and silly shirts, hats, and player titles all come together to create a vibe that's cozy and laid-back, but with a distinctly off-kilter comedic underpinning. it also matters how you release your game, and who your audience ends up being, though.

Sea of Thieves was the Xbox game that kicked off Microsoft's commitment to releasing all its first-party titles through their Game Pass service, putting it in front of a very wide audience who's closest points of comparison for a socially-oriented game were things like Destiny which did put more focus on the mechanics of progression. in some sense, this loops back around to things i talked about in my piece on Halo Infinite, too - in that essay, i somewhat cynically bemoaned the social culture of Halo, but that has a lot more to do with the type of culture cultivated by Halo's target audiences than whether or not the social gameplay features that spread that culture were good or not in a vacuum.

WEBFISHING, on the other hand, is intensely, proudly niche. it started off as a game jam project on itch.io, picked back up after a few dormant years and essentially developed over the course of a cumulative five months, according to a Steam news update. the highest status symbol is the obscure Leedsichthys, and the fashion of the season is hats that proclaim "I ❤ PEEING" and post-ironic 'three wolves' tees. in my limited sample size, the core pillars of WEBFISHING's audience are disaffected 20-somethings, LGTBQ+ players, stoners, and furries, and 90% of the time, it's some combination of these labels, which i say with nothing but love in my heart.

in playing with my own pre-existing social circle, i've found that WEBFISHING can be intensely relaxing - it's fun to wander the island, showing off fresh new catches or teaching a friend about this weird thing you found, all while decompressing after a long day. without trying to date this article too specifically, the real world is not an especially fun place at the end of 2024, and i think there's genuinely something very important about finding both solidarity and relaxation wherever you can. it might be small and seem unimportant, but i can absolutely vouch for how experiences like WEBFISHING can be absolutely crucial for getting me and those i cherish through tough times.

on the other hand, diving into the wild west of WEBFISHING public lobbies has also proven to be its own surprising form of affirmation. not every server is a banger, but sometimes you stumble upon something truly special. once, i found a person playing this game's surprisingly complex guitar out on the docks, talking about the instrument's quirks as they took on a K.K. Slider-esque role. another player said "now do Hurt by Johnny Cash", and the guitar player... just straight-up did! they seemed a little sheepish about it after the fact, but were quickly met with an outpouring of support and approving meows. another time, i found myself on a last-minute beer run for an impromptu 'webfishing webwedding', taking a detour along the way to catch an alien fish as my plus one. i returned just in time to see some genuinely sweet vows exchanged before we all moshed to the Athletic theme from Super Mario World and huddled around some player-placed toilets for some group fishing.

so, clearly WEBFISHING has cultivated a culture that skews charmingly weird, through a combination of its Gamecube-era throwback sensibilities, its devoted niche of fans, and its $5 price tag on Steam. a lot of games strive to be cozy these days, but i would say WEBFISHING goes a step further. it's one thing to have cozy aesthetics, or to design your game around an activity that feels cozy, but WEBFISHING just... is cozy. the time i spend playing it is time i would describe as innately cozy, in its aesthetics, mechanics, and in a more intangible social sense. i think a huge part of that i that its design and audience don't shy away from the fact that you can be cozy and still be a little bit of a freak, too - it's a very authentic space for very authentic people. cozy can mean a lack of rough edges, but it can also be about embracing rough edges as a part of the character of a work.

if there's anything i would say to temper that praise, it is that WEBFISHING is a bit of a raw experience. by its very nature, a game with a major focus on social functions and the ability to create public lobbies might introduce you to some shitty people sometimes. moderation seems basically non-existent, both in terms of what can get through chat and in preventing hackers from screwing with lobbies. WEBFISHING is very much defined by what you bring to it and how you choose to engage, and it's up to the players to continue cultivating the type of culture they want to see while letting outsider chuds wither on the vine. really, that might be the truest example of how i think WEBFISHING evokes the idea of the "third place" - it's conversational neutral ground, and it's up to all of its participants to define the tone and stand up for the things they care about within it.

i haven't really done any "game of the year"-type stuff on this website before, for a few reasons. for starters, the time of year when everyone's abuzz about that kind of thing also happens to be the time of year where it's hardest for me to really deep-dive on a big post. it's also just a concept i don't see a ton of utility in, personally - i might bring it up flippantly from time to time, but i'm bad at playing favorites. i cannot tell you definitively what my favorite game of 2024 was, let alone what you should think qualifies. what i can do, though, is talk about what individual games mean to me, and hope that you can find something applicable within that.

if you like old-school PS2 arena fighters and flashy stylization, Sparking! ZERO might be HYPERFIXT's "game of the year" for you. if you like tightly designed platforming and are ready to admit to yourself that Shadow the Hedgehog is unironically kind of cool, Sonic x Shadow Generations might be HYPERFIXT's "game of the year" for you. and if you enjoy this website's 'old web' sensibilites, and you're a little scared about the state of the world, and you need a little slice of escapism where you can fish the day away and crack open a few cold ones with your closest friends or meet new freaks like you, then WEBFISHING is probably HYPERFIXT's "game of the year" for you.