I doubt very many are directly on the take, but I think there's a lot of semi-conscious self-censorship and score / review disconnect that goes on at the well k

I doubt very many are directly on the take, but I think there's a lot of semi-conscious self-censorship and score / review disconnect that goes on at the well known sites, for all the talk of a hard wall between editorial and advertising. And there's a lot of "content" that is just very thinly veiled PR for an upcoming release. I also think there's a good deal of corruption and nepotism around stuff like the IGF and IndieCade, from my experience swimming in those circles (I did an MFA game design at NYU) I was mostly just joking around, but I do think there are reliable ways of finding good games: -look at player scores/reviews on Metacritic -look for games with many reviews on Steam that have Very Positive or Overwhelmingly Positive ratings but that you've never heard of -Tim Rogers (look, I kinda hate the guy too, but he's the real deal) -More seriously (and this is the best option), blogs / Discord communities / Twitter walls of good indie devs like Michael Brough, Zach Gage, Terry Cavanagh, Stephen Lavelle, etc. Like, check out freeindiegam.es, or join Brough's Discord. I am old so I don't know the new waves but you could scroll through a few hundred listings on Itch, look up some Twitter accounts from there, and find them. Most of the very best stuff is of course not on consoles at all but on PC, web, and mobile