[ColinCampbell]

I'd like to address some of the points Syderman makes, especially as he raises some important issues.

First, the Daily News is very clear about the site's status as something created on behalf of Cryptic. The blurb on the front page makes no mention of the site being 'independent'. It's owned by Cryptic. This is not something I feel any desire to conceal.

The story on this site says that Daily News is independently run, which is an entirely different thing (although I can see that confusion might arise). It gestures towards a process operationally separate from the PR and marketing teams, which is an important point to make.

This past week I've enjoyed free access to Cryptic and have been allowed to write the stories I want to write. There's been no editing or interference - in fact the marketing and PR team have gone out of their way to stay at arm's length in order to give the copy as much authenticity as possible. There are loads more interesting stories to come in the next few weeks as a result of this access. The PR team know nothing about them; nor will they until they are published. I hope that the copy speaks for itself.

You are right to say that the Daily News won't be trashing the game. The site is owned by Cryptic . It is created, ultimately, to sell more games. But it does this by offering up as much information about the game as possible; certainly more than you would normally expect to come out of a development house, even via the general run of press interviews. I don't know of any independent websites that have trashed the game; it hasn't been launched yet, after all. We won't be running a review of the game which, clearly, would be absurd.

In interviewing various senior members of the Cryptic team I've asked them some tough questions and I'll be reporting their answers. The point of this exercise is to be open and authentic; not to gush a lot of PR and marketing-speak. I think this a part of the way media works today. To split the world into "PR and news" is to misunderstand the way the world actually works.

Syderman makes one point that I want to pick up. The Intent Social Media site is there to sell professional blogging services to publishers and developers. it is not a news site. Apart from the odd column, in which I'll always lay out my role, I have suspended my work on games news sites and am focusing on building pro-blogs.

I hope these blogs will do a good job of bringing more useful information to gamers directly from the games' makers, and I hope they represent those game makers in a truthful and honest way. I am certainly finding it very interesting working directly with Cryptic, and seeing how these guys operate from the inside. I want to tell great stories about this game and the people who make it. But I won't pretend that my role is somehow independent of Cryptic.