How about you just kick me in the teeth instead? It would hurt less.

Although the title on my business card says "contributing writer," I am more commonly referred to--usually with a curled upper lip-- as a "blogger." The very word has a particularly negative connotation amongst the game community, and it's easy to see why. Any yutz with Internet access can have a blog, after all, and many a blogger has played fast and loose with the truth in the hopes of scoring traffic.

I know this, I accept this, but I strive to prove to people each and every day that bloggers being ethics-free is not an absolute. I'm pretty sure I've read a story or two about "reputable" journalists fudging sources or simply making shit up out of whole cloth, and yet people still toss around the word "journalist" as though it's solid gold. That's fine. I don't have a degree in journalism, I'm not aspiring to win a Pulitzer, I just want to do my job to the best of my ability, with integrity and sincerity.

Let's be honest, shall we? Telling people that Okami got delayed three weeks or that there's a new patch coming for Burnout Paradise is not exactly life-altering work. I do what I do, and I'm proud of it, but I'm not under the impression that my wordsmithery is going to change the world. That doesn't mean I don't take what I do seriously, though. I may write about video games for a living, but I'm a professional, dammit, and I conduct myself accordingly.

I bring up all of that not to complain about my job--I love it--but rather to try and give you some backstory that might better shed light onto why a simple comment made by a very lovely programmer at GDC made me want to cry in frustration.

I was in the Sony bloggers lounge, writing up an announcement from Insomniac Games. A young, shy, charming young programmer sat down with me, and we chatted a bit in the amiable way that strangers do when forced into a social situation. A colleague of hers passed by, and she joked with him about a comment he had made earlier. I asked what it was, and they both looked at me in alarm. He scuttled away after muttering something noncommittal, and she was clearly unsure of how to proceed. She didn't want to be rude, but she also didn't want something damaging showing up online.

To put her at ease, I said, "Strictly off the record, of course." I have no interest in humiliating developers for the sake of traffic. She told me the comment in question--it was a doozy, alright--and we chuckled over it. Then she said, completely unmaliciously, "Wait--does 'off the record' even work with bloggers?"

Sigh.

That sums it up right there. That, in a nutshell, is how I'm perceived by people who don't know me. That I'm just part of the problem, a member of a sleazy band of integrity-free assholes who will happily lie to your face as they compose an attention-grabbing, truth-skewing lede in their heads. All because I write for a blog and not a "real" publication.

It sucks. It hurts. It's frustrating as hell. It makes me wonder why I bother trying so hard to do things the right way when people are simply going to assume that I have a tenuous relationship with the truth.

The answer, I think, is that whether or not your efforts are appreciated, they still count. Doing your job well has value in and of itself, even if other folks don't care to notice.

At least that's what I like to believe.