games have been approached ethical systemically or thematically for years

Sorry, but I couldn't make sense of that sentence. Don't know if I just temporarily lost the ability to read, or if it's because English isn't my first language, or it's just clumsily written. ;)

I think your observations may have been true 15-20 years ago but they're way, way out of date

I kind of disagree on a fundamental level. There's clearly a fairly big disconnect between what (some) games journalists think they're doing, and what many of their readers perceive it as.

If your readers see no difference between what's being written by games journalists today, and what you thought had been left behind 15-20 years ago, then... do you really get to say "no, reader, your view is completely outdated. Games journalism isn't at all like that today"?

If it still looks that way to the reader, perhaps games journalism hasn't actually advanced as far as you, the professional games journalist likes to think.

Personally, I would probably have framed it a bit differently, but I feel like most games journalism still gets hung up on technicalities. Sure, it's kind of moved on from the "hard" technical details like polygon count and resolution and framerate and lens flare and whatnot that we got 8 years ago, to "softer" technical details. Now it's about how satisfying the guns feel, or how rewarding the games feedback loop feels. It's still a very technical, reductionist way of approaching games. Games are still reviewed as if they were a playground. "The slide was super tall and going down it was fun. The roundabout was kind of wonky though. And there were so many swings, you wouldn't even believe it."

There's still next to no critique of the content, the meaning, the message of a game, of how characters are portrayed, little discussion of what the game made you think or feel. No discussion of why the game is important, of what it tries to do. No academic analysis, no reflection. There's no expectation that games can or should do more than deliver the next adrenaline rush.

In the last couple of years a few exceptions have turned up, but by and large, I feel like games journalism has as little to say as it did 20 years ago.