Since the games press began in the mid-1980s, it has had a complicated relationship with the mainstream media. For every respectable publication striving for integrity, there seem to be several more fly-by-night operations that ignore basic journalistic practices to pander to gamers' basest appetites to gain circulation.
As a result, many mainstream magazines and newspapers tend to dismiss game publications as covens of fanboyism and wellsprings of hackeyened prose. In the July issue of Esquire magazine, author and former Spin rock critic Chuck Klosterman wrote an article titled "The Lester Bangs of Video Games". In that article he claimed that "video games in 2006 are the culture equivalent of rock music in 1967," but Klosterman also effectively leveled a broadside against game journalism, asserting that "video-game criticism doesn't exist."
