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Hi. My name is Ryan, and I am a video game journalist.

Now, I know what a lot of you folks in the audience are saying: "Ryan, you silly goose, there's no such thing as a video game journalist. What you guys do isn't 'journalism,' dummy. All you do is copy and paste press releases."

I'm going to have to politely disagree with your hypothetical (and kind of rude) retort. While games journalism is certainly its own breed of the vocation, just because our stories aren't always thoroughly investigated pieces of written perfection, hammered out in a smoke-filled bullpen bustling with the clickety-clack of a dozen keyboards on desks cluttered with balled up pieces of rejected copy, doesn't make what we do any less "journalistic."

Let me explain...

Journalism is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media." However, many folks--including individuals within the industry itself--don't consider the type of writing being done in the video games press "journalism." This leaves me wondering when the term became so protected, like a sacred occupation only a handful of highly trained individuals can claim to be a part of.

I, for one, am a journalist by profession. I have a Bachelor of Science in journalism hanging on my wall, I spent four years working for my college rag (writer, editor and editor-in-chief) and have spent the past six years covering schools, sports, news, features and everything else under the sun for a weekly paper in a small town just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Here's a little secret: What I do for my legitimate reporting job isn't all that different from what I've done in the field of games journalism.

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During any given week, the half of our newspaper that isn't filled with ads is filled with all that journalistic content our readers seem to enjoy (or hate, according to some letters to the editor). While much of what runs each week comes from tracking down numbers, interviewing sources and putting all of that information into a carefully constructed story, I'd estimate that a third of what makes it to print comes from a very similar process as what takes place in the video games press. Namely, the re-writing of press releases.

Each section of the paper has "Briefs," which are nothing more than short pieces of information sent in from various individuals, clubs, organizations, etc. in the form of press releases. These folks are promoting their next meeting, fundraiser or whatever, and they'd like it to appear in the next issue so our readers will know about it.

Even some shorter stories are the retooled result of these press releases. The folks who send these releases in are usually competent enough to string a few paragraphs together, so why would we spend extra time cutting them up, putting them into our own words or hunting down unnecessary interviews when the news being offered is so straightforward? Giving such pieces the full treatment isn't fulfilling a journalistic duty, it's wasting time.

The biggest complaint against games journalism is that the majority of stories that run on games news sites are this very sort of regurgitated press release. But just because the item may seem insignificant to some readers or little more than promoting Game X for Developer Y doesn't make the content any less newsworthy. It's skipping over these items that would be irresponsible, not the other way around.

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The problem with the games industry is that the major sources are so ridiculously guarded. If I want to get the mayor's comment on a proposed road maintenance bond, all I have to do is call his office and, chances are, I'll hear back from him within a day or two. In the games industry, that's simply not the case. That's why exclusive interviews are so coveted; these things are extremely hard to land.

A major part of that issue is the scope of the industry we're reporting on (worldwide) so, if I'm not hearing back from a developer (or PR firm, most likely), I can't just show up at their office and ask if anyone can spare a moment to speak with me. Similarly, these folks are under so many contractual restrictions that, half the time, you're not going to get them to spill word one about their current project anyway. It sucks, but that's how it is.

So what do we do? We do our best to land those interviews, formulate our own story ideas and try to provide thoughtful and entertaining commentary using whatever tools we have to work with (i.e. Press releases. Lots and lots of press releases).

If someone sends me a release with a couple of canned quotes about a new title that's coming out, I use what I've been provided and try to turn it into an entertaining story for those readers who might be interested in that particular piece of information. It can be seen as simply fueling the publicity machine, but that doesn't make it not news. It's a piece of information that we didn't know yesterday. Why wouldn't we provide that to our readers today?

In a recent column for Edge, Clint Hocking calls for games journos to "stop re-writing press releases and write the news that matters." I think that we are, Clint. While I get wanting to see more serious discussion and thoughtful pieces in the field of games, those piddly stories still matter. They require less thought and way less effort to put together, but they still have value to those readers who desperately want to know what type of DLC Skyrim will be getting in January.

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Hocking goes on to say, "Of the hundreds of thousands of words that the gaming press generates monthly, how can there not be room for a well-researched exposé on the cultural impact of annualising a brand? How can we not have an unbiased investigative report into how industry employment contracts constrain (whether fairly or otherwise) freedom of information and freedom of workers?"

While some stories certainly fall through the cracks, if your argument is that these "big" pieces don't exist in the world of game journalism, I'd have to argue that you're just not looking in the right places. Those types of stories are being written every single day across dozens of sites, big and small.

The stories are there and the discussions are being had. Maybe not on as grand a scale as we would like, but it's getting better with each passing year. And there are only so many people covering this massive industry so, yeah, some stories are going to drift by unnoticed.

But as video games have progressed, so too has the industry that reports on them. I wholeheartedly agree with Hocking that we could always use more thoughtful, thoroughly investigated stories, but there are hundreds of folks out there right this moment pounding away on pieces relevant to themselves and the people who will read their work. I don't see the point in denying that work its merit. Some may be megaton commentaries that will light up the internet for a few weeks while others are your run-of-the-mill "check out this new Call of Duty trailer" briefs. The thing to remember is that it's all important news to someone.

Or, going back to my original argument, it's all journalism, folks. Maybe it's not the romanticized version of the work we all have in our heads, but it's not too shabby, either. We've still got lots of growing to do, sure, but that doesn't mean we need to put quote marks around the J word every time it relates to our industry. There's no need to glorify what we are all doing here, but we shouldn't sell ourselves too short, either.

Infinite Ammo is a weekly column by Ryan Winslett about video games, the industry that make them and the people who play them. He can be stalked via his blog at staticechoes.com and followed on twitter @RyanWinslett.