You might think, looking in from the outside, that being a games journalist is a pretty sweet deal. In some regards it really is. I mean we get to basically write about and play games for a living (well, those of us that are paid which is far less than one might imagine). Many of us hold down second or third jobs, some do things just for games others just for the love of games.

But being a games journalist is not all big parties, jet setting and video game playing. For example, I've been searching for a Konami contact for Central Europe for four months now. Even Konami apparently doesn't know who their person here is. A very helpful Konami employee in America has tried several times to get his German colleague to contact me and get me in touch with the right person. Unfortunately his German contact hasn't bothered to contact me. So we don't cover all the Konami titles because we can't get them.

The same things goes for Nintendo who quite possibly has the worst press relatations roadmap in the industry. Every country is basically a separate agency, no one knows who is doing what where and even when I contacted Nintendo directly in the past, they couldn't even tell me what company was responsible for half of Europe. So sometimes we don't have all the Nintendo news we'd like.

Sony on the other hand I know exactly who and where. The simply splendid thing about Sony is that they simply don't give a f---. Sorry but it's true. I am in contact with the head of PR for Europe over at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. He's a great guy named Nick Caplin. We had a great chat at GC Leipzig. He sent me the local contact information here in Prague. However, the local contacts don't bother to respond to email or answer their phone. After a half-dozen attempts I just decided that they aren't interested in doing actual PR and so, we don't cover as much Sony stuff as we should.

Microsoft? Surprisingly, were the easiest of the major console makers to get in contact with. The others would do well to take a look at them and take notes. It was amazingly simple to find them here in Central Europe.

Then there are others like Square Enix who go the way of Sony and never respond to emails.

Really, my job as Editor-in-Chief consists of many things including covering the news, editing, scheduling and publishing content and looking for further things to be covered. When a company doesn't bother to answer half a dozen times, I simply stop trying. They obviously believe that they don't need any extra press coverage. I mean, if they didn't, they would have responded right?

My favorite reply from the PR world is "Oh, you're in Prague? I can't send you ANYTHING because you're not in X (generally X = UK). They can't send me information, screens, games, hardware, and sometimes even a proper response. Because they're tasked with supplying PR to the UK and the UK only. Sending an email to me with some information and screens or finding a contact for me to talk to would simply break the budget I imagine.

So if there are certain companies that we don't cover enough, I apologize. We try, we truly do, it's just that due to marketing budgets, PR remit (areas companies are responsible for) and just plain laziness or lack or interest (so it would seem).

I know that GDN isn't the biggest, baddest news agency in gaming. I know we don't have millions of hits and hundreds of thousands of readers. But we will one day. We do offer worldwide coverage for games. This month, what with today being the final day, is officially our best month ever. We'll touch 70,000 visits and top 115,000 pages viewed probably.

You know what, sometimes I think we don't need to cover the people who don't bother to respond...because we have more than enough companies who do. Sure we won't cover all the same things that the big sites do, but we hold true to our values. We stay close to the developers and we offer unique content on a daily basis. We cover things that the others won't for whatever reason.

After all, THAT is what it means to be the premier independent gaming news source doesn't it?