That's bad journalism, of course. If people are buying something in droves, and classical analysis suggests that that should be impossible, then there's something wrong with the analysis. A proper article would start with what we know -- "people love this game" -- and then try to figure out why.

You see the same backwards approach to journalism everywhere there's a scale in how much work things take to produce. Critics appreciate things with a complex process behind them. People, meanwhile, value mostly nostalgia and super-stimuli.

The wine most popular in blind taste-tests of people who haven't developed a "palate" for wine, is basically equivalent to grape juice with some vodka dumped into it. This isn't a bad thing! But critics hate it, because there's nothing to talk about there. It's grapey, and it's alcoholic, and that's all people really want. Until, that is, they're immersed into the whole culture of oaky this and tannins that, and start thinking about what went into the wine instead of just whether they want to drink a lot of it.

And because of this, critics generally don't serve the people. People want to find the best-tasting grapey alcohol. Critics, meanwhile, just want to talk about how long something aged in a barrel, and don't even have words to differentiate grapey alcohols.