Tue, March 2, 2004
Oscar Pool Kudos—12:54 PM
Oscar Par-tay [jefftidball.com]
I'm really happy about this. Arksie's runner-up from this weekend's Oscar pool has generously included my system in his review of Sunday's party. My people, how they love me...
Update: As a result of Tidball's no-archive, history-is-written-by-the-victors site layout, the Oscar Par-tay entry is no longer available by following the link above. However, not one to let flattery go unrecognized, I've reprinted it here without permission.
Stacey and I just got back home from Holly's Oscar party, which, like all parties, took place at Alex Court's house. The very coolest thing about this particular Oscar party in comparison with all the other Oscar parties I've had the pleasure to enjoy was the computer-enabled pick-the-winners contest with continually updated standings projected on the wall. Yes, seriously.
One of Holly's friends, Jameson, whose last name I do not know and whose first name I may well have misspelled, created and programmed the game. He ran it from his 15" PowerBook. The game itself was very well designed, especially considering how dreadfully mediocre a game where you pick Oscar winners easily could have been.
For each award category, each participant had ten points to wager on the nominees for that award. Put all ten points down on Seabiscuit or spread your points among nominees in any way you like. As each winner is announced, you score the points you wagered on the winner and lose the rest. The projected leaderboard tracked the scoring in each category, as well as a running total for each player and various other statistics.
Of fifteen or twenty people attending, I finished in second place with 177 points, behind winner Joe Mulder, who had 192. As there were 24 awards, the perfect score would have been 240.
In addition to the game itself actually being gamable (Do wager 10s to maximize your potential score, or spread you wagers to play more conservatively?), the truly remarkable thing was that Jameson is apparently part of the miniscule subset of people who know how to program their computers and also have excellent design sense. Not only was the game fun, the leaderboard wasn't ugly.
A most excellent Oscar evening.
Update Again: Tidball now has archives, but no archives page. Hunting meticulously through MT-generated URLs, I've found and published the link right to the good stuff. But, rather than take out the part above where it's quoted anyway... I feel like I'll leave it in and bask in its glory.
sambcool — Sun, 2/5/06 10:48pm
Hello, is there any way you'd be willing to share your tool for tracking Oscar pool standings on the 10-point scale? My wife wants to have an Oscar party and this might make it bearable for me. Thank you!
Sam
Bee Boy — Sun, 2/5/06 11:48pm
Holly, you predicted this. We should put our heads together and come up with a pricing scheme.
Joe Mulder — Mon, 2/6/06 12:33pm
If I may say, "sambcool," you better hope Jameson comes up with a way to mass-market this baby, because it's the only way that the Oscars are bearable for any of us.
Bee Boy — Mon, 2/6/06 12:58pm
Let's not leave out two other possibilities, although far, far less likely: studios making better movies, and the Academy nominating better movies.
Failing that, the Oscars might be "almost bearable" if someone would just sign Billy Crystal to a lifetime hosting contract.
sambcool — Mon, 2/6/06 2:39pm
Well, the DVR factor helps, too. :) Bee Boy, any further thoughts? What language did you write the tool in? Platform?
Bee Boy — Mon, 2/6/06 4:50pm
The onebee Oscar Pool was coded in PHP/MySQL (more non-technical details available via the Oscar Time link on this page). Sadly, the earliest it could be ready for mass participation would be Oscars '07, considering the time crunch before this year's ceremony – but I'll be sure to keep everyone posted. In the meantime, consider the "competition" (such as it is):
AwardsPool.com - Ugly design, but at least it hasn't been updated in over two years.
Games About Movies - Still displaying last year's results, but maybe a new pool will open for Oscars '06.
Yahoo! Oscar Pick-Em - Hasn't opened for Oscars '06 business yet, but it's your best bet for someone that will.
The "Official" Pool presented by AMPAS and EW, sponsored by Netflix (Yeah, baby! Suck on that, Blockbuster Online multi-million dollar Super Bowl ad campaign!) - No cool "play amongst your friends" capacity, but some fairly substantial prizes.
"Holly" — Tue, 2/7/06 11:54am
Just wanted to register my agreement with both clauses of this statement.