Now, I found this article to be, for the most part, well reasoned and entertaining. However, I think there is a serious flaw in the argument.
The way I see it, Kierkegaard is saying something like this:
1. Ranked, "best of" lists are actually multi-genre lists.
2. Ranked multi-genre lists ought to be compared first at the level of genre, second at the level of the individual game.
3. Doing such a list is a huge undertaking, and none of the "experts" in question really have an adequate understanding for such a task, so they simply rank at the level of the individual game.
4. Therefore, these lists are, fundamentally, produced from an insufficient knowledge base, spawned by retards, etc. etc. etc.
5. The lists are, then, WORTHLESS, because they set out to establish order and succeed at anything but.
I think that this is all very well put, but the thing is, many people already realize this. When I look at Tim's list over at actionbutton, I don't salivate, thinking that I am actually about to discover the top twenty-five games of all time. Instead, I understand that I am about to read a bunch of silly articles that will probably introduce me to a bunch of games that I either had not previously heard of, or had largely ignored. For this reason, I think that the list is actually quite valuable.
Perhaps they are merely mislabeled, which seems to be your entire beef with NGJ anyway. Would you be less offended if all of the lists were titled in a fashion such as: "This is the list of games that I, Tim Rogers, hereby declare, for nebulous, probably nonexistent reasons to be the TOP TWENTY FIVE OF ALL TIME, in the order that they come to mind, with no criteria offered; no hope of justification:"?
Edit:
As far as I know, no major source of videogame criticism has ever really sat down and outlined a criteria. So of course these lists are asinine, as are all the scores and other rankings, but we already knew that!
Actually, look! Actionbutton does have a criteria:
The criteria for a game’s inclusion — well, the criteria are actually pretty dodgy and antisocial, though let’s just pretend that we picked games that we really love — a lot — and that possess a clean aesthetic, self-assured graphical and sonic presentation, streamlined mechanics, and common-sensical level design.
They even say, right there, that there criteria is "dodgy," which is a word I had to look up: "dishonest or unreliable."
So right off the bat, we already know that this ranking is either dishonest, unreliable, or both. The people at actionbutton must realize then, that their work has some other merit, or else they wouldn't have gone to all the trouble.