Practicalmadness

About a month ago, I launched the 2008 Practicalmadness Oscars Game with an e-mail blast and a few personal messages to friends and friends-of-friends. But I neglected to really mention it here at all, apart from a post a while back where I questioned whether I’d even have time to do an Oscars Game this year.

Since then over 100 new players have registered to play the game, not to mention the dozens returning from last year. Not only that, but this year’s game has broken last year’s records for website traffic. During a typical month, Practicalmadness serves about 1,800 pages to 1,000-1,200 unique visitors. During last year’s Oscars Game we did about twice that number.

So far in February ‘08, we’ve served over 5,800 pageviews. February 22 was the site’s highest traffic day in its seven-year history, with over 1,500 views — a whole normal month’s worth of traffic — just on that one day.

As for our other numbers:

• 3,078 new picks
• 21 new pools
• 26 “TalkSmack” comments (which is amazing seeing as I never really even announced this feature)

In the grand scheme of things — at the Facebook scale, if you will — these numbers are tiny, pitiful, weak. But for my silly Oscars contest on my silly weblog, in a year where I barely had time to put a fresh coat of paint on the site and load in the new nominees, these numbers are awesome.

The Oscars Game ends tonight, and today — once I’ve showered up, coffee-ed up and ruined my legs on the cardio machine — I’m going to be putting the finishing touches on the Oscar Night Live part of the game. That’s the part where, after the deadline has passed and picks are locked, you can come back to the site during the Oscars telecast (which starts 7:30 PM CST on ABC) and see winners and scores updated in real time. I even plan to have an iPhone interface, so if you’re out at a real Oscar Party you can still keep an eye on your score.

The Prize

As for the one big unanswered question of the game — what you get if you win — I am pleased to announce that the winner of the 2008 Oscars Game will receive US$50 in cold hard (digital) cash. Most likely this would take the form of an Amazon.com or iTunes Store gift card. But hey, whatever — it’s $50, and as long as you can receive $50 via e-mail, you sir or madam can have your $50.

Tiebreakers

In the event there is a tie for first place, the prize will be split between the winners. But given the rather competitive Oscar landscape this year, I’ve decided at the last minute (that is, less than 12 hours before the picks deadline) to restore the old “Black Swan” bonus. What’s that, you ask? Basically, you get bonus points for correctly picking three or more of what I’m calling “Black Swan” categories, those being categories that are notoriously inscrutable and hard to predict.

This year, the Black Swans are the three short film categories (Live Action Short, Documentary Short and Animated Short), plus Documentary Feature and Foreign Language Film. But to make things interesting, I’m also going to add two randomly-chosen wild card categories, to be revealed when the game ends tonight at 7:00. Each Black Swan is worth 5 bonus points, but you have to get three or more of them correct. It’s not a huge bonus, but in a tight game with all other things being equal, those few points can be the difference between winning and losing.

Update: Know how I said Friday had broken the one-day traffic record for this site? I lied — today, Sunday 24 Feb, is the new champion with 1,886 pageviews so far. The Oscars are still an hour away, so we could very well break 2,000 pageviews today. Thanks everyone so much for playing, and here’s hoping you decide to continue to come around and enjoy all the quality nonsense I have to offer.