“NeoGAF’s membership includes thousands of press and industry accounts, but among those with a negative attitude toward the enthusiast press, it comes down to the sentiment that it is primarily a credulous PR arm of the video game publishers,” says Malka. “Access to preview coverage, interviews, and early review copies is tremendously important to most of the games press, and publishers dictate that access. If a website is pushing an exclusive review of the next hyped triple-A game, it’s likely that those involved managed to pander to the game’s publisher harder than everyone else did, and that is usually reflected in the tone of the review.”
However much one might disagree with this – and we do in the strongest possible terms – there’s no dispute over the fact that these views are out there, and they are dominant on NeoGAF.
