I think the author is contrasting video game criticism (which I agree is worthless) with that of other art forms, which I would argue has just become naked promotion to the same degree.

Even in historically cranky areas such as classical music, I see next to no intense critical scrutiny whatsoever. I would love someone to prove me wrong with some blog or other media outlet that reviews classical music albums and treats them even as harshly as someone like Christgau did rock. It has led to pianists like Lang Lang that are widely reviled among the classical piano community gaining fame and success because critics are simply advertisers in the classical world. Bear in mind, this is an art form in which audiences used to be so critical that Glenn Gould was booed for playing Brahms 1 with Bernstein just because he took slow tempi!

Just look at how RT scores have inflated in film. Or the whole poptimism thing in music. Or the fact that Amanda Gorman was considered one of the best poets in the US a few years ago. There's no critical voice anymore outside of the stodgiest of academic circles.

> Even in historically cranky areas such as classical music, I see next to no intense critical scrutiny whatsoever

Not in my country. The music critics on national radio are _extremely_ harsh on the performance ('it lacked soul and any sense of the piece, like a student forced by his professor to play scales again and again' was the last I heard, just yesterday, while I was working on installing my father's forge). Likewise, still on national radio, cinema and book critics are extremely harsh.

> which I would argue has just become naked promotion to the same degree.

Everything you said is equally applicable to video game reviews and reviewers. Once again I am compelled to bring up Amiga Power the gaming magazine that dared, to much outrage among publishers, to give review scores lower than 7-8 on the regular. They were very pro-consumer even though in early 90's the press was already treated as ad space that pretends it's not.