This sounds like an argument I've heard time and again by people who demand that games be considered high art but also contradict themselves claiming they should never be judged like actual high art is. And they never notice that this is exactly why it is not considered high art and why the industry often avoids trying to turn it into a high art.
No, journalists don't HAVE AN UNBRIDLED HATRED FOR THE VERY LIVES OF GAMERS. No, they aren't CLAIMING THEY ARE COMMITTING GENOCIDE ACROSS THE LAND. No, they aren't ZERO TALENT SUBHUMANS WHO DESERVE TO LIVE OFF LESS THAN $7 A DAY. You aren't making your point sound better by flinging cliché exaggerated and sophomoric personal attacks at people who are actually doing something to push for the advancement of the art.
You give no examples to support your rant, but I'd like to point a few out myself.
Metroid: Other M was championed by people with this attitude before launch. When responsible journalists pointed out that the game's story is sexist trash, and that the gameplay is actually harmed by the story itself, blind raging gamers screamed their heads off about "BAD journalists do BAD thing to BEST GAME EVER". And then they actually played it for themselves.
None of them are claiming it's from God's own desktop anymore; they aren't even calling it
good.
But you said "racist", right? Okay, let's look at
Resident Evil 5. Again, reviewers did their jobs and pointed out that the game had a problem involving racist stereotypes. Again, the r/KIA crowd gave
the only response they ever give to actual thought. And then the game was released to the general public, and we found out that not only was the opening sequence using a lot of coded racist visual language, but the game had literal spear-chucking, bone-through-the-nose tribal crazy ooga-boogaing Black people as enemies. And again, the Body Snatcher gamers silenced themselves about that game because they wanted us to all forget they were dead wrong.
But they haven't remained silent. They still throw around vague complaints about anyone who writes anything about games. They demand silence from anyone who speaks out of line with one very loud minority of gamers. And in all this attempt to silence free speech, they complain that they are being called fascists for just saying nobody should ever be allowed to express an opinion different from theirs.
"There's so much hostility" because that kind of gamer creates it. They invent a non-existent enemy and attack without considering that maybe the writer has a point, and that maybe the soulless corporation that fails over and over to hire good writers and demands that gamers just pay $60+ for mediocrity is the one actually doing something wrong. And as they blow their money on trash they themselves don't like again and again, they never stop to think that maybe they should have considered the fact that sometimes the thing you want to be good simply is not.
Seriously, this crowd would have never said "f*** Konami" if Konami didn't stop making games, but instead just gave them shovelware. Fire Igarashi? Fine, just give us more garbage CV. Fire Kojima? Fine, who cares if MGS has a story? Fire del Toro? Who needs
an actual high art writer working on a game? But stop making games? Then and only then do they see the soulless corporation as anything less than a god.
Really, this kind of argument just poisons the entire gaming community and drives it to self destruction. You want gaming to be considered an art? Then let it stand up for itself. The game makers are grown adults who can handle rational criticism. Any rational person can tell that their businesses are not going to be COMPLETE DESTROYED by a mere article that only a portion of the customer base reads. If anything will destroy gaming, it is the irrational rage from the KIA crowd that is poisoning every website that allows discussion of them. And in the long run, they'll destroy those websites, too.
Side note: this post comes with a free t-shirt:
