The guy who gave a negative review to Battlezone 98 Redux after playing 8k hours

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.

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.

Eh, partially right. There are of course exceptions, which is "creative" games, that allow to build and craft something- participate constructive in a creation - by either contributing to that creation - or just exploring something infinite like a procedurally generated world. Games can be infinite - similar to LEGO. A good product, takes a chunk of audience out of the market forever. For the artificial limitations of a company created "experience" you are of course correct.

I think that has no bearing on the boredom factor.

I love creative games, but each one will make me bored and burned out after a while. Then i take a break and do something else for a while and maybe the itch comes back later and i'll give it another go.

Even the procedurally generated stuff today is so limited in the variety of it. Yeah, there might be a billion planets in something like No Mans Sky or Elite Dangerous, but they're not very interesting to visit and mostly rather similar.

I'm sure this will improve, but it's very hard to make something believable and interesting on a small detailed scale.