The Last of Us Tops the 100 Greatest Games List: The Argument Is About the Yardstick, Not the Game

In a small café in Hongdae, Seoul, I reopened the list of the 100 greatest games of all time published by Kinda Funny Games. The waiter at the next table was holding his phone, and the same list filled his screen. His finger stopped on the number one slot for a long time. The Last of Us. Then he scrolled down, then back up, as if hunting for a reason to believe it, or not to.

I know that pause. Nineteen years of reading rankings and sitting beside stat sheets taught me something simple: nobody argues about seventy-third place. Every argument crowds into the first slot, where one name has to carry an entire definition of beauty. When a ranking refuses to disclose its yardstick, the top slot turns into a mirror — everyone sees their own standard in it, and sees the person next to them insulting it.

Kinda Funny Games published one hundred titles and placed The Last of Us — Naughty Dog's narrative action-adventure — at number one. Behind it sits a lineage: Uncharted opened the road, The Last of Us inherited it and pushed cinematic storytelling in games up a level.

The reaction was immediate. Three camps appeared. The first defended the pick on historical influence: this work cannot be skipped when the industry's history is rewritten. The second objected on systemic depth: The Last of Us Part II plays better, and if it plays better, why does Part I sit above it. The third pulled in another name entirely — Sekiro, or any title with a denser combat system.

The article itself raises the criteria question: does this list judge by gameplay quality, by popularity, or by historical influence? There is no answer, and no published weighting. Nobody in any of the three camps states which scale they are grading on.

In the related-news block, the same outlet ran a string of esports headlines: LCK viewership doubling after six years of franchising, controversy over K/DA's new look, GAM Esports tied to VCT Pacific 2027, LOUD returning at VCT Champions 2026, and MLBB Vietnam's potential to reach global competitiveness. I read those lines as a list of leads to verify. No figures, no measurement window, no sourcing. A headline is only an invitation to check.

The argument around The Last of Us at number one circles a hidden yardstick; it does not sit on the quality of the game.

The structure of the two sides is plain. The defence argues from historical influence: this work changed how the industry tells stories. The attack argues from mechanical depth: combat systems, level design, tactical freedom. Two different rubrics, applied to one ranking, and neither side is wrong inside its own frame. This is the kind of argument I meet almost weekly in my work.

In the LCK, people argue over who is the greatest player in history. Some cite trophies, some cite statistics, some cite championship counts. Three yardsticks, three answers, and the debate never ends because nobody states which unit they are measuring in. LCK 2026 taught me that a name is also a promise. But that promise can only be read if you know what it was promised in.

One analytical frame in this whole story feels durable to me, and it sits outside the game's title. It is the opposition between safe and ambitious. The Last of Us Part I is described as the safe choice — refining what has already been proven. Part II is the ambitious choice — experimental, risky, and met with a split reaction. In esports the same pair appears as: the team that plays the proven meta, and the team that plays the open direction with high variance. The first wins steadily; the second produces seasons nobody forgets. Fans always praise the second and always pick the first when a title is on the line.

I remember a case from 2026. A marksman named Hena played for Fredit BRION, bottom of the LCK Summer table, with a 31 percent win rate across his last twenty matches. Read quickly, he was a failing player. But I sat through his movement frame by frame and saw unusual patience — he waited on the right beat rather than on luck. Six months later he moved to a top-tier team. Same data, two readings, two opposite conclusions. Rankings behave the same way: one top slot, two yardsticks, two versions of the truth.

Then there is the evidence. The article quotes one player, some gamers, many people. No count, no platform, no date. In my line of work, an index without a sample size is a rumour wearing a suit. I print match stat sheets, underline line by line, and always ask the same question: what does this index measure, across how many observations, inside what time window. This list answers none of the three.

One small detail is worth recording. The article builds the industry's history as a ladder: from Pong to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. That ladder has a very old start and a very new end, and the end is a title that has only just launched. When a work has not had time to settle and is already placed as the endpoint of history, the reader is receiving recency bias, not history.

I have to check myself here.

My first reaction to the list was to side with the third camp — the one demanding mechanical depth. But that is also a yardstick, and I chose it because I am an esports analyst, because I earn a living reading systems. I am not neutral. I simply have a bias that is written more politely.

Step back, and The Last of Us at number one is entirely defensible. Film canon rewarded staging and image before it rewarded screenplay. Game canon behaves the same way: it rewards production value and storytelling. That is a real industry signal — studios read these lists to set budgets for years ahead. A well-told narrative title at the top is no fault of the list; it is a statement about what the industry is rewarding.

But if that is true, there is a sharper blind spot. The games that trained an entire generation of competitive thinkers — games where every frame is a decision — rarely sit at the top of universal lists. They are filed into a niche, with a niche audience and niche criteria. That separation is editorially defensible, yet it makes a part of the industry's history invisible to the general reader.

And there is a second possibility I do not rule out: criteria opacity may be deliberate. A list that publishes its weighting ends its argument in two days. A list that does not publish it survives for two weeks. In the attention economy, the argument is the product.

I do not predict outcomes; I only read the story being written. The story here sits elsewhere: the games industry still has no public rubric for its biggest honours, and every time a list appears, people argue with two different dictionaries.

What I want to carry out of this story is a small habit: whenever you read a ranking, ask what it measures before asking whom it placed first. Every match is a chapter, and I am only turning the page. But at least I want to know which language I am reading in.

There are victories you have to read three times before you see the tears. And there are honours you have to read three times before you see the yardstick hidden somewhere between the lines.

From an empty stand, I learned to write for myself first.