A little bit more about PR
Gamasutra has a piece about how Gaming PR works, since this was one of the things I was most fascinated with in my first large-scale game development project, I think it was pretty interesting:
PR And the Game Media: How PR shapes what you think about games
The fascinating part isn’t so much the length publishers would reputedly go to to secure favorable review, but rather why they care so much in the first place. As I wrote last time, there exists some confusion whether review scores actually help game sales, and considering how many issues the biggest gaming magazines sell vs. How many copies a “successful” game sells, I’m not prepared to assume review scores are actually that important.