Photo Contest: Win My Nintendo DS + 6 DS Games (and a Pretty Sweet 2nd Place Prize Too)
So here’s the deal. I’ve been busy the past few weeks packing up the apartment for our upcoming move. In finding stuff I no longer need or want, I’ve been toying around wtih the idea of giving it away via the blog (as opposed to selling it on Craigslist).
I came across my old Nintendo DS Lite, and realized it’s been sitting (lonely, forgotten) on my shelf for quite some time now. And so I’m going to give it away as part of a contest, along with six other DS games: Magnetica, Yoshi Touch and Go, Nintendogs, Goldeneye, Meteos and Brain Age. By my rough math, I’d estimate this to be worth around $140 ($80 for the DS, $10 per game).
While I bought the DS maybe 3 years ago, I didn’t use it heavily and I’d assess it as being in “excellent” condition. I bought nearly all of those games used, but I’d list them as being in pretty pristine shape.
Contest Eligibility and Rules
The time frame for this competition begins now, and will end at midnight on Friday evening, March 12th. In order to be eligible, you just need to do the following:
2) The phrase “Hi Felix!” must appear somewhere in the photo.
3) The photo must be at least 600W x 450H or bigger.
4) Email the photo to me: contest [at] avoision [dot] com.
A few more comments on the photo requirement: my goal is to post up the photos here on the blog, so if you’re participating in the contest… I’m assuming you’re cool with me doing that. You need to be in the photo, and the phrase “Hi Felix!” needs to be somewhere in the photo. You could be holding a sign in your hand, it could be text typed out on your screen. Feel free to get as creative as you want with it (more on this in a sec).
One entry per person. Once the contest window closes my plan is to select a winner at random, from all the folks who submitted. I’ll mail you the prize, and take care of the shipping costs too, cause I’m nice like that.
Though I’m selecting the winner at random, I have a second prize to award. I will pick my favorite photo submitted, and that person will receive my copy of Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds. So in a way, one photo gets you entered for two possible prizes.
I should also note that this book is a favorite of mine, and is actually something I plucked from my bookshelf (I literally had to find it in one of my packed boxes). It’s not a discard or a throwaway – I just want that to be clear. I think it’s a great read, and would be a really delightful prize for someone who’s into video games.
While the big prize is done by random selection, I wanted there to be a little something to reward creativity. So I’ll also go over all the submissions and my favorite photo gets one of my favorite books. I’ll also mail the book out to the winner, and take care of the shipping.
Uhm… Why Are You Doing This?
Good question! Do you think it’s kind of odd that I’m just giving away a bunch of stuff? Does it sound too good to be true? Man… when did you get so cynical?
Seriously – I wasn’t using the DS much anymore, and the idea of a contest seemed more fun than just selling it. I could use the money, believe me, but it seemed like a fun opportunity to do a little something different with my blog here.
I gave away a Sigmund Freud action figure via a haiku contest last week, and that seemed to go over pretty well. So I’ve decided to up things a little bit with another contest.
Of course, one of my goals is to drive traffic to this place. My hope is that people will pass the link to this contest around, and that I’ll end up gaining a lot more visitors to the site, and more subscribers to my RSS feed. The thinking is that if folks swing by to check out the contest, they’ll be more likely to check out some of the other interesting areas on the site like my Flash experiments, my Ten Best Days, my Guide to Making a Pecha Kucha Presentation and the free desktop images.
As far as the photo submissions go, I wanted there to be some small task that created a slight barrier to entry. Given the worth of the prize(s), I think this is a pretty attractive contest and would potentially draw a lot of folks. A photo for a Nintendo DS and six games feels like a more than fair deal to me.
On top of that, I wanted this contest to be a little silly. I’m hoping I get a lot of interested folks, and that I receive a lot of photo submissions. I’m excited to see how creative and goofy people will get with this requirement, and can’t wait to get the first photo submission. It’s a bit like me organizing my own repetition and variation experiment.
Good Luck and Spread the Word!
Not sure how this is going to shake out – I might get 5 entries, I might get 500. If you’re a fan of this site and wouldn’t mind helping me pass the word around about this contest, that’d be pretty swell. I’ll end up promoting this via Facebook and Twitter throughout the week, but any help is sharing this link would be pretty awesome.
So let’s kick this thing off. Game on!
Related:
Chris Buys a Comet Pinball Machine
Pinball Expo 2009
Arcade (Poem)
Visiting Nickel City Arcade, Family Entertainment Center
Blogs That Actually Update, Female Gamers, and Paying Attention: Nintendo DS Lite Promotion
Pinball Expo 2007: Free Play Heaven
Photo sent!
Mark Crane (March 8, 2010 at 1:57 pm)Go me!
Stacey (March 10, 2010 at 8:15 pm)Sent! That was fun!
Sharon (March 11, 2010 at 10:25 am)Go Sharon too!
Stacey (March 12, 2010 at 10:35 pm)Stacey is nice! Go Stacey!
Sharon (March 14, 2010 at 2:18 pm)