"Game Journalists Need A Reality Check" — Asmongold

Asmongold opens with a concrete example: a gaming journalist played four hours of Final Fantasy 16 and wrote that the game "doesn't even want to be a video game" — too much watching, too little playing. Asmongold disagrees with the verdict but agrees with the premise that the game's opening is slow. He rates the game 9.5 out of 10, but acknowledges that "the game gets better and better and better over time" while starting from "a pretty low point." The journalist's real mistake, he argues, is not disliking the game — it's reviewing the whole game after only playing a fraction of it.

The four-hour problem

Asmongold's central argument is that games should be fun from hour zero. "You should not expect somebody to invest four hours into a game and then tell them it gets good on hour seven," he says. "There are a lot of forms of media and entertainment out there. You should not have to wait an arbitrary period of time to enjoy yourself inside of a game."