I do not intend on using any points I get from awards on this.

According to Steam, a guide is a player-created reference for games and software, created by people just like you. They can be used to help with puzzle solutions, find hidden secrets, etc. Steam also gives you the option to make them.

Guides have simplified to over-the-top tutorials on how to press a singular button. These are typically useless and only made to farm Steam Points, a virtual currency on the platform which can be used to buy items such as borders, backgrounds, and avatars for your profile. There's nothing wrong with trying to get a few items for your profile, but buying a few $10 games should suffice for that. Even if you're broke, writing a good guide only costs you a small amount of time, maybe 30 minutes.

That doesn't stop you from creating one. Maybe you could go in-depth on a certain achievement, or even write a tutorial on how to mod a game. The sky and community guidelines are the limit for creating these. There's clearly no issue here, though, since there's more than a hundred guides on how to jump of all things in the first four pages when you search for that. You have the opportunity.

I'm glad you asked. Here's a small breakdown of guides, how they work, and how to create one.

This is as simple as clicking a few links. Just follow along and you'll be able to do this.

1. Go to the Community Hub you want to create the guide for. I've provided a link to the Garry's Mod Community Hub here.
   
2. Click on "Guides" at the top of the page, or if your screen is too small, click on the drop-down box saying "All", then click "Guides".
   
3. Click the blue button that says "Create your own" at the top of the next page. You should be at this screen:
   

Congratulations! You've started to create a guide! This will be where you will write everything about your topic down. Speaking of...

In the guide's title, you should mention what the guide is about (i.e. "How to navigate the maze that is ctf_turbine's ventilation systems"). This could be whatever you want. I'm going to be sticking with the title I provided, for the sake of simplicity, but you shouldn't. If applicable, you should always try to describe your guide.

I cannot stress this enough, but images (including the guide's icon) should be related to the topic at hand. Seeing the same unfunny buff Reddit meme man over and over again doesn't tell users what the guide teaches.



You may have seen these headings up above. That's thanks to the built-in formatting tools Steam gives. They can really spice things up in terms of how you present text. The tags for these are as follows:
All of these and more can be found under the Formatting help button when editing a section. If wanted, you may combine any or all of these like this:

So you've created your guide, now what?

First, you've got to add sections. You can do this by clicking the "Add a section" button under Guide Contents. If you did it right, you should see a bar pop up reading "(new section, not titled yet)". You can create as many of these as you need. I don't actually think there's a limit, but for your own sake, try not to test that.

Once you've clicked on the edit button next to the section, you should now be able to write stuff. There's an 8,000 character limit per section, so you should have room to fit everything. If you don't, you can always split them up.

In each section, you may narrow down the topic to certain categories. Images are important for showing what you're talking about. Do not underestimate their power.

Here's an example guide I made to show you the least you could do: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891626309
In short, it shows you where entrances and exits are for the vents in Turbine, and where the paths lead. It also tells you how you can use them to flank or counter flanking.

Despite what the vast majority of guides do, you don't have to write a conclusion for them. Most people just put some form of "thanks for reading" or plug their other guides or social media there. With that out of the way, however, I hope this helps you with writing actual guides for once.