HomeStation Magazine Announces the Winners of the Writing Contest!
“@HomeStationMag Paying out $60 to get hundreds of articles? Brilliant. Have fun with that quality control thing.”
– A cynical response from a Twitter reader
Michael Flatley once talked about how he turned other peoples’ negativity into his own personal rocket fuel. It helped motivate him to succeed. Jackie Robinson was known for playing his best baseball when he was angry. Some people, it seems, are simply wired to not back down from challenges.
It’s much the same with the HSM team.
I was hanging out in Home (something I get to do less and less of these days, unfortunately), chatting with an acquaintance at the Gamer’s Lounge. It was October of 2010; HomeStation Magazine had just been formed, but it was in its infancy. There was no website, there were no magazine issues, nobody would give us the time of day, and no one had any idea what was going to happen next.
But we had the idea.
“It’ll never work,” my friend told me. “You honestly expect to have an all-volunteer publication which produces a new story every single day? And you expect to maintain professional-caliber journalism throughout? Forget it. You’ll have infighting, overinflated ego trips and worse. And that’s from the ones who actually show up to the meetings and produce something. Most of ‘em won’t even have the work ethic to stick with it for the long run.”
“Not if it’s done correctly,” I replied. “You just have to have really awesome people who share the same vision.”
“And where will you get them from?” She retorted, actually annoyed. “Home’s full of kids, wannabe ‘gangstas’ and perverts. Even if you do manage to assemble a great team and they choose to stick with you, who’s gonna read the thing?”
“The silent economic strength of Home,” I said. “The adults. I’m not pandering to lowest common denominator here. They don’t spend any money on the service anyway. HomeStation’s going to be something that mature, responsible and intelligent people — regardless of age — will want to read, both developer and consumer alike. Because there’s a lot of demand for journalism that caters to them, and nobody else is really providing it. Might as well be us.”
“You’re out of your mind,” my friend dismissed. “Oh sure, you might get an issue released. Maybe two. But you’ll fall apart shortly thereafter and end up doing nothing more than copying and pasting news stories from elsewhere. You’ll be gone within six months, tops.”
My avatar smiled (well, back then, our avatars were always smiling). “Shall we meet here in six months and see?”
Half a year passed. And you know what? My friend was gone.
But HomeStation was still here. Because HomeStation caught on.
It’s amazing how many talented, mature, responsible and intelligent people want to sign on with a Home fan project that’s actually at their level. Something they could feel proud attaching their names to. Not for glory, or money, or anything else: but simply to enjoy the artistic act of creating something that might, in some oblique way, help shape the future of Home’s development and give back to the community.
Thanks, HSM, for pimping my lines!
And the numbers don’t lie: for the second quarter of 2011, we recorded over 15,000 unique visitors to our website. We more than doubled our audience from the first quarter. It seems a whole lot of people like the idea of following a Sony-positive and Home-positive publication that’s written like it belongs in the real world instead of the world of internet-speak. Something that people can comfortably refer their friends and colleagues to, and show it off proudly.
So when we tried our first writing contest, we were curious to see what would happen. We knew, from the comments we get here on the website as well as elsewhere, that there are some fascinating people who read us and follow us. Maybe a contest, with prizes, would spur them on to try their hands at contributing an article?
(Funny part is, we actually do have a hard time finding additional contributors, but for a very unusual reason: intimidation. The idea that their work isn’t good enough, and the fear of rejection. Sometimes having such a polished publication can present its own challenges!)
The avalanche of guest submissions was far in excess of anything we were expecting. And while we didn’t publish everything that came across the desk, most of it actually did make it to the front page. We had some fabulous guest contributions from Orion_NGC1976, cajun4life, Estim20, Danger_Dad, Rath_Starblade, johneboy1970 and beyond. We also had some fantastic contributions from our team writers, and needless to say, I think you can expect to see a lot of this material showing up in future HSM magazine issues.
As a result, we’ve decided to expand the winners’ list. As you recall, the plan was to have three $20 PSN cards go to the top three winners (at least one of whom had to be a guest contributor who’d never been published in HSM before), and the winners would be determined by how many unique visitors went to the HSM website and read the article. We’ve decided to expand to five winners, with the two runners-up receiving redemption codes for Scribble Shooter swag!
So, without further ado, here are the winners of the first HSM writing contest!
FIRST PLACE: Burbie52, for “Home Athletes: Club VIP — Very Important Pixels” — $20 PSN card!
SECOND PLACE: Orion_NGC1976, for “Home As Therapy” — $20 PSN card!
THIRD PLACE: SealWyf, for “100 Free Items and Seal” — $20 PSN card!
RUNNER-UP: Estim20, for “Don’t Be Shy” — Scribble Shooter outfit redemption voucher!
RUNNER-UP: Rath_Starblade, for “Personality Archetypes in Home” — Scribble Shooter outfit redemption voucher!
Congratulations to our winners and all of our contributors for producing some fabulous content about Home and Sony gaming! Keep it locked on the HomeStation to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in Home, and look for our next contest, coming soon!
July 17th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 8 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Great articles and well deserved! Congrats to those who submitted articles, and also to HSM on a successful venture!
Congrats the winners and to ALL who entered the contest. There was So many excellent well written articles, the real winners were all of us who got to log on and read your work.
Thank you all for your entries.
To all who entered -- you are more talented than you realize.
I hope I see more of your work soon.
I want to thank everyone who read my piece and the club VIP who provided me the material to do the work as well. I am enjoying writing for this magazine a great deal and will continue to do so. I also want to thank Norse and Terra for helping me to become a better writer. If you had told me that I would be doing this when I first started coming into Home I would have laughed at you. I have written all of my life, but it has always been poetry and fiction, so tackling a completely new genre was daunting to me at first. I also wasn’t sure I had more than the first article in me, but both Home and Home Station have proved me wrong. Many thanks to those who read us and provide the fodder for our work. I hope more of you join us in this adventure!
Congrats to all the winners. I read all those articles and it must have been so hard to pick an overall winner!
Congratulations to all, $20 cards are neat but recognition is better. Good luck in the future
Congrats to all the winners! The Gift cards were well earned!
Congrats Burbie, and others ;).