Surely the companies who code the games, the programmers, are the ones to blame here.
Actually no. I believe the main blame is on marketing types. Once you've blamed them, blame designers next. Now should a game have ethical and factual marketing, a decent and interesting design, then you can start blaming the people who've created the game.3DMark is just often used for things it wasn't designed to do. It's not particularly FutureMarks fault either - they have to make a living too, and where would all those ex-demo scene people go if it wasn't for companies like FutureMark? Making another Tomb Raider, Hitman or Total Overdose? No thanks - I'll take another 3DMark any day.