Guide of the Year Awards 2019

[Platisfaction]

PSNProfiles is proud to announce the sixth annual

 

 

 

That's right PSNProfiles community, it's that time of the year again. We are delighted to reach this milestone and to hold this competition for the sixth year now. In the previous 11 months, 374 guides were published. That's about 1.1 guides per day! All that effort and dedication deserves a worthy event to find out which guides are among the best.
 
Just like the previous times we'll be awarding prizes to the best three guides published by 1st of December, but more about that later. This gives you roughly 4 weeks to write a couple more guides, which will be eligible for this contest. Maybe this is the time to finish that one guide you have been working on for ages, but could never find the motivation for to continue? For those of you who have been thinking about writing their first guide, now's a good time as any to start. Check out the PSNP Guide Manual for more information.
 

Just like last year, we are not only going to find out which three guides will run away with the glorious Guide of the Year Award! Moreover, you can win prizes in the 7 other categories for guides in addition to the best overall top three guides. To make it crystal clear: A total number of 24 guides will be awarded with juicy prizes!

 

 

These categories are for:

• Exceptional Walkthrough Guide: A well made, extremely helpful walkthrough of a game or overall trophy list.
• Exceptional Gameplay Guide: Anything that isn't a walkthrough such as a collectible guide or a supplementary guide.
• Exceptional DLC Guide: Guides for pieces of DLC or patches that add trophies.
• Exceptional Niche Game Guide: These include guides for indie games, imported games (JP, KR, etc), and non-AAA games.
• Exceptional Use of Formatting: Some writers make their guide so clean and organized it's like an artwork by making great use of headings, colours, images, etc.
• Exceptional Quality Upkeep: A writer keeps their guide updated, listens to feedback, & interacts with guide comments (they don't just publish and disappear).
• Exceptional Use of Original Content: Some writers go the extra mile and make their own videos, images, and combination of these within their guide.

Here are the rules:

• Starting on December 2nd, the community will be able to nominate guides for the overall top 3 and a guide in each category that are worthy to be considered for the GotY Award. When nominating, a minimum of 4 are required: at least 3 categories and a nomination for the overall top 3.
• A special nomination thread will be created on December 2nd. You will be required to give solid reasons for your choices. Every guide published on PSNProfiles between December 2 2018 and December 1 2019 will be eligible, a list will be provided in the nomination thread. Keep in mind that the guide team needs time to review a guide and it may need revisions, so please don't wait until the last day to submit a guide for review.
• The nomination thread will be closed after two weeks. The top ten guides with the most nominations will go on to the next round.
• During the next round the PSNProfiles staff (Sly, mods, and the guide team) will pick the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The total number of nominations for guides in the top ten is irrelevant for our decision. The guides which get the most nominations is not necessarily going to win, the staff will review all ten guides and the only thing that counts is quality! Since we don't want to rush this, expect this to take another 2-4 weeks. Due to the added categories, we may even need longer, as this is the first time we're adding new categories.
• Since the staff will be deciding the winners, their guides will not be eligible! Co-op guides with staff members will be eligible, in case a co-op guide ends up in the top 3, the non-staff writer will get the whole prize.
• In case a guide has more than 1 writer, the prize will be split between all guide contributors, so long as they contributed a meaningful amount to the guide. We track all edits so this will be checked.

 

That about covers it all.

 

Wait a minute, didn't you say something about prizes?

Ah right, almost forgot about this. And now what you've all been waiting for, the GotYA 2019 prizes are as follows:

 

Every Guide Writer:

• The Ultimate Prize: is the satisfaction of helping gamers all around the world. Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the shoulder.

 

Overall Top 3:

•  1st Place: a cash prize of $100
•  2nd Place: a cash prize of $80
•  3rd Place: a cash prize of $60

 

Exceptional Categories:

•  1st Place: a cash prize of $50
•  2nd Place: a cash prize of $40
•  3rd Place: a cash prize of $30

 

In case you cannot be bothered to do the math: We are talking about a whopping total of $1080 in prize money!

 

Besides that, the winning guides (both overall and categories) also obtain an awesome seal, so that everyone will know you did an outstanding job and won a Guide of the Year Award! This means almost endless internet fame and glory, it's worth much more than those silly prizes!
 
So, what are you waiting for? Use that secret stockpile of Halloween candy to stay awake, tell those family members you dislike during Thanksgiving there's some important "homework" that needs to be done, write a high-quality guide, and you might win this thing!

 

Nominations start December 2nd, see you then! 

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by BlindMango

[BlindMango]

It's that time a year again! I've seen some pretty incredible guides this year so there will be come competition, best of luck to all the guide writers this year! =D

[Undead Wolf]

5 minutes ago, Platisfaction said:

In case a guide has more than 1 writer, the prize will be split between all guide contributors, so long as they contributed a meaningful amount to the guide. We track all edits so this will be checked.

 

Guys, come on. You said this last year too and it wasn't true then. The team members who win a prize are asked if they want their share or not; it doesn't matter how much (or little) you contribute to the guide. As far as I know, edits can't be tracked after a certain amount of time has passed.

 

I'm surprised all of the categories from last year stayed too. I don't think the average user really knows it means to have exceptional formatting in a guide. I think the exceptional upkeep category is a bit of a strange one too. Usually if a guide requires lots of feedback changes after publishing , it was rushed and lacking info to begin with. Not really something that should be rewarded. I get the idea behind the category, but I don't think you can expect people to keep up with a guide they used long after completing the game to see if changes have been made. I'm sure this was mentioned last year by someone else, but if you insist on keeping these 2 categories, it should probably be the guide team members themselves who select the winners since they will have the most knowledge about these things. I remember the upkeep category in particular didn't get many nominations at all last year.

[BlindMango]

2 hours ago, Undead Wolf said:

I'm surprised all of the categories from last year stayed too. I don't think the average user really knows it means to have exceptional formatting in a guide. I think the exceptional upkeep category is a bit of a strange one too. Usually if a guide requires lots of feedback changes after publishing , it was rushed and lacking info to begin with. Not really something that should be rewarded. I get the idea behind the category, but I don't think you can expect people to keep up with a guide they used long after completing the game to see if changes have been made. I'm sure this was mentioned last year by someone else, but if you insist on keeping these 2 categories, it should probably be the guide team members themselves who select the winners since they will have the most knowledge about these things. I remember the upkeep category in particular didn't get many nominations at all last year.

 

Yeah I suppose we have a month to go before the categories are permanently set in stone, but we have to have the 7 total. We could do something like change "Exceptional Niche Game Guide" over to "Exceptional Niche/Indie Game Guide" and replace the Upkeep category with an "Exceptional Import Game Guide" category maybe - I remember some people wanted something like that last year

 

Edited November 2, 2019 by BlindMango

[snakebit10]

Is there a way to post past winners? Good luck to all who have contributed guides this year.

[TheBloodOfKatana]

i hope have time for help us .. but i cant good luck for everyone