Guy gives a negative review to Battlezone after playing 8k hours; He's right

To be fair, it kinda makes sense. The person best equipped to criticise a game or work is probably often someone who's experienced it for the longest. That way, they get to know all the things that don't add up, get repetitive on repeat playthroughs, various UI and UX annoyances that get worse the more you experience them, etc.

There's a reason the biggest fans of a game or film or TV series tend to give some of the harshest criticism, and why the most active users of a tool or program tend to have the most to say about it.

At 8000 hours, most players have lost any connection to the design intent of "game" they're "playing" -- they've lost any intentional sense of pacing, any intentional sense of discovery, and have almost by definition disregarded any intentional sense of conclusion or completeness.

They're engaging in their own idiosyncratic experience with software that doesn't work exactly the way they now dream, but is apparently closer to what they want than anyrhing else.

In the general case, their insights are going to be a curiosity and might sometimes happen to coincide with a more broadly experienced flaw in the design. And of course they may be right on target for whatever few other "8000 hour" players.

Playing a game or using software a lot can give you some deep insights into it. But there is a crossover point where you spend so much time with it that your relationship with it isn't very related to anyone else's anymore, and your insights likewise become less relatable.

This is exactly why the biggest thing in gamedev, and all software dev to an extent, is getting your software in front of users as soon as possible. As a developer it isn't just that you know how it works, but you'll also have played the game or used the front end of the experience for thousands of hours.

New eyes will see fresh flaws. The user might not be right about how to fix the flaw, but they are absolutely right about where the flaws are.

It's an online multiplayer PvP game. There is no pacing, conclusion or completeness like a single-player "estimated 40 hour playthrough" game, discovery is a metagame, and a review veering into historiography can add relevant and useful information for prospective players because of it, not in spite of it.

Uh, it can be multi-player. But the single player campaigns were the business, IMO.

The 8000 hour players might not even know what they themselves want anymore. Usually when they get to that point and they're submitting feedback requesting rather large changes, it's unlikely that they'll find much joy even if their requests are implemented exactly. They are burnt out with the game and that's not something that is fixed by making their grinds easier, adding a load more maps/weapons, or overhauling a system within the game.

When they've fallen out of love with the game, the best solution is to take a long break or just fully move on.

It depends on what you are looking for out of the review. If you want a PhD dissertation on the game then yes, the guy who has dedicated probably decades of his life playing it is the person to go to. If you are a casual gamer looking for a simple answer for whether you should play the game or not, you don't really want to ask someone whose evaluation criteria isn't even in the same universe as yours.

Online PvP games absolutely have pacing. Back then it was just about the skill ceiling and learning curve. In today's gaming era it's also matchmaking ranks and rewards and battlepass content. I do miss the days when you could buy a big budget multiplayer game and always jump in with all the tools pro players had. But it sounds like he had several complaints with the game dumbing down the skill ceiling (e.g. sniper bunny hopping) and bugs that let a novice player wipe the enemy team. A well paced multiplayer game has techniques that seem feasible to master but require a good amount of practice. A bad one only lets the top 1% of players achieve those skills after thousands of hours, or doesn't have such techniques at all.

If you’ve done something 8,000 hours without being forced or paid and your net review is negative, that relationship is something in the family of compulsion or addiction. Man drinks 1,000 bottles of Jim Beam, gives it a thumbs down.

There’s still some information there, about how the game roped this guy in and where it left him. But like someone who’s just looking to try a bourbon, his review probably isn’t that helpful to you.

Nah, 8000 hours means something is wrong. If you played a game that long, you just can't give a negative review. It also means you are hooked and you need to touch grass, or you need someone to delete your account and get on with your life.

1 year of your life playing a game is just plain wrong, sorry to say that, but that's the reality.