Here’s my best guess as to What Happened:
From an editorial perspective, everyone needs to get assigned a different game to review or cover, so in terms of ‘work horurs’ people are not playing the same game unless it’s for a feature (Everyone Plays Plunkbat or something). And in terms of free time hours, a lot of RPS staff are adults with children who find their free time sucked up by not-video-game-things and only have free time for a select few games.
It could also mean staff are having increasingly divergent interests which is good for site coverage* but makes things awkward during award season.
I want to say “Okay NOW is the time we get the big obvious games that multiple people voted on” but you know, I already said that a couple of days ago, so what do I know.
*Unless you really like that genre but has different tastes than the person who covers them, e.g. me, adventure games, and John