I used to write for one of the bigger Danish gaming sites back near 2000. Some of my articles even made it to some of our national news papers which contracted particularly well written reviews back then. One of the first thing I was told by the bosses was that certain games needed a 8-10/10 or they would stop sending us review copies, and that was just how it was. It wasn’t in anyway serious. One of my articles which ended up in Jyllands Posten was for a dogs life or whatever it was called and I had spent maybe 5 minutes playing the game. I think that was the reason my review got so popular, because I covered my ass by being creative writing it from a dogs perspective and basically saying nothing about the actual game. I also once gave temple of elemental evil 8/10 even though it was so horribly bugged that it could barely run solely because I liked Trokia games.

I was a teenager doing it as a side gig for paper route money, so it’s not like my integrity was ever really in it. Nobody reading my reviews knew that, however, I was presented as an adult full time employee by the company. So yes, it was always pretty bad in a lot of places.