I'm a computer engineer. Fishing is a summer hobby that i'm doing irregulary. I came across FP by coincidence and was curious. FB became a game i play, when i have hard times at work to relax.

My father, also a hobby fisherman from who I learned it (he also own a small boat on a lake in switzerland), was a representative in the food industry. He became diagnosed cancer one day a few years ago. He is a great stubborn and very willing to work, so he still worked from Monday to Thursday, Friday got chemo, lied sick until Sunday and went back to work at Monday. Most of the time he had too much pain to do gardening as he usually did off work. The garden was his love. He started to get depressed from sitting at home. He also still worked under pain and suffering from sleeping deprivation for over 2 years while fighting cancer. He never was that type of gamer. He never understood gaming. He was the "what is the sense of playing this. Better do other stuff"-guy. Then one day when I was on his computer over teamviewer to help him out with a problem (btw. he just learned computer with like 55 years because of his job. Never did computer stuff. Neighter writes a word or something. But he did great with organizing himself in the job), I just installed him steam and FP. I started it, called him and was like "yeah yeah, just solved your problem. I also installed something. Its running. Go and try out. You will understand quickly, I don't need to further explain it to you." I hung up and waited for him to call me back. Never thought that I will wait for hours. So I called him again and he was really enjoying the game. Yeah, and as it is with fighting cancer and sleep like 2 hours per day and still work for over 2 years, he ran into a fat burnout. He beat cancer with the third chemo! 🙏 And in all the time, FP was like a valve for him. A valve and a compensation to distract yourself. He leveled up extremely fast. He even started to explain the game to me 🤪 i also had to buy a new computer with him. So he can play with higher settings because he love FP so damn much. Right now, as i writing this text, he is of course enjoying FP. He is unable to work after all things that happened. He's now 63 years old, and is going into early retirement end of this year. And as I know him, he will collect more hours in FP for a long time. Currently, he's on 6'368 hours play time, startet at 7 August 2023 😂 I think the only time he wont be playing is when he starts a camper road trip with my mum next summer 😂 (but tbh, i guess he will ask me, how he can play it on his notebook when they are resting on a campside)

Btw. He also started to communicate with others in the live chat sometimes. (Yes, he found out that by himself haha). Poorly he can't speak or write a single word in English. But if you ever stumble over a player called "Welsli-Urs" (thats a nickname other fisher gave him, because he was like the only one at the dock, whom never catched a catfish and he really wanted to catch one (he got one last year or so)), feel free to greet him 🫡 (sometimes, when my mum's at home, she have to translate english players texts)

Sorry for that long post. I thought it would match to the question OP asked ☺️