I believe this is due to an extreme necessity of self-reafirmation from those so-called "journalists", an attempt to show the society that gamers do have a certain level of maturity that many people still don´t believe.
Many videogame journalists anr not journalists at all, they´re just gamers/players that want their object of praise to be taken seriously by the society in general. They think that this is only achieavable if games turn into something that´s only aimed at a mature audience. Nintendo in a certain way is always running from this premise, most Nintendo products are family-friendly, and those pseudo-journalists don´t want to be seen by the society as immature consumers.
Well.. they´re plainly wrong on this approach. Videogames today should be just like movies: movies are for everyone and their types or cathegories may reach every kind of person. No real movie critic or journalist feel ashamed of watching a big Disney / Dreamworks animation or a family fantasy like Harry Potter, so why videogame critics and journalists insist in this dumb idea of feeling ashamed when playing games like Super Mario series, Kirby series or anything family-friendly? A true videogame journalist should be open-minded to all and every kind of experience that this media can provide, be it a kid´s game or an adult´s game.
Even with this gigantic and highly specializaed industry, there is still a (good) part of our western society,that still see games as a kids/teenager-only entertainment. In a sense that people who enjoy videogames are people who have never matured at all. Of course this is just stupidity, but the way those journalists approach the industry is not helping to change that perception. It´s doing exactely the opposite, they´re just enforcing that videogame consumers are just... teenagers who wants to be adults but never matured enough to reach that.
(note: English is not my first language, so I hope to get my statements clear, I don´t mind if you correct me, feel free to do that)
