GameRevolution » Manifesto » New Featured Prize (and Revolutionary Prize) for Vox Pop

New Featured Prize (and Revolutionary Prize) for Vox Pop

Posted on Wednesday, July 7 @ 15:09:09 Eastern by Nick_Tan

We have come up with a prize for Vox Pop that we think you will be excited about: Having your piece turned into a feature for Game Revolution. We're not lying. If your work has the flavor, the fervor, and the funny to become a highlighted feature on the front page, it will be.

How do you qualify? All you have to do is write a blog post that we think is good enough to be featured in the Vox Pop box. We will be following all the latest blog entries to make sure your post isn't missed. We're thinking about awarding the feature prize about one article one to two months, though we will feature more (or less) depending on the quantity and quality of the community's Vox Pop entries.

What are we looking for? As you might expect, our demands for being highlighted as a front page GR feature is greater than for being highlighted in the Vox Pop box. But if you have what it takes to win a Vox Pop of the Month (as many of you have in the past), then it won't take much more for your article to be elevated to a GR feature.

Essentially, we're looking for articles that are as close as possible to professional-grade work. Certainly, we're not going to expect you to nail every grammar and style rule and write groundbreaking, hard-hitting editorials that change the face of the industry. That's hard enough as a professional. But we will expect you to have a firm grasp on written English and to have something interesting and well-developed to say on whatever topic you choose to write about.

If your editorial is selected as a GR feature, we will be editing it as if it were a professional draft. Actually, that's what it is. So the less that we have to fix, the less your words are changed, the happier you'll be, and the better chance you have at winning the featured prize. Whatever the case, we will provide a link to your original Vox Pop blog post in the feature to preserve your original message in its purest form.

Any tips? Some quick guidelines are to be persuasive, be humorous, and have impact behind your words (without resorting to exclamation marks). Write solid paragraphs that have enough to say and don't ramble on and pack in unnecessary words and sentences to fluff up the piece. We're not going to impose some word minimum, as if you are writing a high school essay, but the piece should fill at least one regular webpage on GR.

We're also looking for a voice that is well-reasoned but that sets itself apart - we're not called Game Revolution for nothing. We love to feature articles that other professional websites won't even think about touching. Status quo, what's that?

Will you contact me? We're going to assume that if you're writing an entry for Vox Pop that you won't mind it being turned into a GR article. But we'll still notify you via PM and the email address you provided when you signed up if you win the prize. You can also PM me about any changes to a featured article you feel are significantly off-base - just don't piss and whine to me or I'll have to go ninja on you.

So what's this Revolutionary Prize? At the end of a Vox Pop year (either January or July of next year), we will choose an overall winner and give that person the opportunity to become a professional, official writer for Game Revolution!!!! (Soak that in for a while.) In addition to your editorial work, we will send you points and codes for video games for preview and review work. Of course, the position will likely be restricted depending on where you are in proximity to us in Berkeley, but by all means, you will be legit. You will have access to parts of the industry that only the press have. Where you take this opportunity from there is entirely up to you.

(We're working on featuring reviews, too. Not sure how long it will take, but my fingers are crossed.)