Course, since this is the interblag, I can't really do anything to begin with. So I mustered up a sternly worded letter! Yeah! Best Plan Ever! Yeah!

This is what I sent to support@Aksysgames.com

Greetings Support Staff of Aksys Games!
All references will be added as links in the bottom of the email.

My name is Michael, a young student, and immense fan of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.

I am writing your team this evening because of an issue I am having with the Caption Contest hosted on the official Aksys Games Localization, Inc Facebook page. First off, I really appreciate you folks running the contest. It's great to have a shot at fantastic prizes like the bundle bonus for 999, a new copy of the game, and other various goodies; and I hope to see more like it in the future. Never was able to pick up that beautiful watch and who doesn't enjoy random goodies?

However, I'm disappointed in the treatment I've received in it. I understand this is coming from a... er, I think the best way to put it is a disgruntled loser, but please hear me out. I submitted an entry that I worked very hard on, and made several drafts of for the event. I'm not much of an artist, but I put a lot of effort into multiple entries and picked my favorite one to submit -- trying to go by the policy of living my life and never being ashamed to attach my name to my actions and creations.

I imagine many individuals working for Aksys Games are the same.

But this evening (10 February 2011) on Facebook, the entry I submitted was entered in as one of the notable entries, #40/40, in an altered and much worse format. I was confused at first, and thinking, "did somebody steal the image from imageshack, open the Paint program and hastily move the slides (unevenly) to go from left to right; and resubmit it as their own?" But in the realm of all possibilities, that's like me mortally wounding a licensed class C boxer with a seagreen crayola crayon. Especially considering I uploaded the image to imageshack mere seconds before submitting my entry email. I had not even shown that image to any peers.

I was wondering why whomever was in charge of the contest decided to personally alter my entry and upload it in a different format from what I sent in? It met all of the qualifications stated:

1. The image was under 300kb.
2. It used the screenshots provided.
3. It did not violate any item in the ToS

And given the comment made by a handler of the account, "...Be as creative as you want!" to an question on adding to the comic strip, I saw no issue with making mine a simple 4Koma, Top to Down comic instead of a transitional western Left to Right comic.

I have yet to see any similar complaints from the other 40 individuals who have had their submitted entries posted online. Why was mine the only one edited by the hosts for this contest? I'm trying to be a reasonable person here, but I cannot find that fair. The only other one "complaint" I saw was one about resizing, entry #4/40, which was done automatically by Facebook -- I assume. And mine would fit without any size alterations. In fact, the version the Facebook/Contest Handler posted was too large in length so that had to be resized. While the original was not too large in height to be resized. Regarding the resize of entry #4/40, that individual, Angel Peden on Facebook merely posted a link to her full entry in a comment on the image.

I soon attempted the same on my own. My comment on the submit just brought up these points:

• Thank you for choosing mine as a notable entry...
• D: Is it possible to upload the original and delete this one...
• Here's a link to the original for those who want to see it...

That was around 6:00pm PST. I would send a link to the above comment I made, or at least quote the comment, but unfortunately, when logging on just a short while ago to see if my pleas were answered, I saw something heartbreaking.

My plea wasn't answered.
My plea was deleted.

I thought to immediately post this in Aksys's support forum, but seeing as my comment about it being edited and linked to the original was deleted, I figured it would be in very bad taste to continue this publicly. It was not my intention to cause any trouble.

But now I'm left with a very bad taste in my mouth regarding this incident. My entry was edited, I've been refused having the original uploaded and a link to my entry. Losing feels bad, but the actions taken against me is more than mere salt on the wounds. It's difficult to imagine any part of Aksys Games doing this to its members. I've praised the company for its interaction with customers, going through and personally answering numerous amounts of questions in detail regarding 999, the great games, and heck, even the advertising with cosplayers. Just don't see that in the states.

But my opinion of the company has taken a drastic turn for the worse in just a short six hours in what was supposed to be a fun event for fantastic prizes. If any resolution is possible, please make it happen. I'm ashamed to relate what was uploaded to my name. It's not good enough to be within the notable entries like that and I hate thinking about how others judge it.

I apologize for the length of this email. I just wanted to explain myself thoroughly, and I suppose it comes back to being disgruntled. I needed to vent my experience. Thank you for reading and whatever route of assist you can take.

Cheers,



Michael

You can skip the above if you want. I personally thought it was sternly written when I wrote it in a white-tea enraged state of mind. Course, reading it now makes me think that if I were somebody else, that Michael fella sounded like he was gonna go cry himself to sleep that night.

On second thought, nevermind. Read the above text in the spoiler. Not gonna cover some stuff here so you'll be a little lost without it.

Thankfully I didn't have any work or class the next day, so after writing the manly letter, I went straight to bed. I woke up early. Took a shower, and went over to a friend's place and went out for a junk-filled breakfast.

I honestly forgot about the entire incident until we got back to his house and he asked if I wanted to go a few rounds on League of Legends. Course I agreed, but when grabbed his laptop, I remembered to check the status of a few items in shipping from eBay. So I brought up my gmail to see if there was any update, and I had a message from a woman named Mary from Aksys Games. Less than 1 business hour from when I sent in the complaint too. It said

Quote: Hi Michael, Thank you so much for taking the time to write to us. Let me explain. First of all, your entry was great! It made a lot of us over at Aksys chuckle...very worthy to be put in the honorable mentions list (to be honest, we are still currently in the judging process and that means, the possible winners are still lurking in the honorable mentions). So, as we uploaded some of the entries to facebook...Houston, we had a problem. We love the format of your 4koma, but alas...it looks like facebook doesn't? And when we tried scaling the image down, the small texts became too difficult to read (as we didn't want to obscure your funny captions). This was what facebook gave us: Quote: Upload Error Unfortunately, this photo could not be uploaded: There was a problem with the image file. So I (not Aksys in general, just me) took the liberty to alter your image so that it fits facebook dimension size requirement. Now, let me apologize with the bottom of my heart. I very sorry if altering your image offends you. I understand that it totally ruined the greatness of your 4koma style and I apologize for not contacting and asking you for permission. Let us try working together by making this work. Would you like me to remove the "edited" version and let me try to save your original 4koma style in a different format to get facebook to accept your file? Have you tried uploading your original entry to your own facebook profile and see if it works for you? Let's try to get this to work because I really don't want to let you down. Please reply as soon as possible or you can contact me by my personal AIM, /Removed/. Also, because we greatly value our fans and customers, we would like to also make it up to you by sending you a pack of Aksys swags. Let me know if you accept this. Again, thank you for letting us know and I apologize on behalf of Aksys for our mistake. Let's work together to fix the issue!

I was a little taken back by this.

Easy to say League of Legends was delayed for a bit. But, yeah...

Now I'm new to Facebook, but I've seen people upload images that wouldn't fit on my 50" projector (in height, thank you). So I had no idea what the issue would be with uploading my image.

I logged into facebook right away and attempted to upload it and I got:

Quote: Upload Error Unfortunately, this photo could not be uploaded: There was a problem with the image file.

I resaved it as a jpeg, tiff, gif, targ, bmp, someweirdasssmahthing, and got:

Quote: Upload Error Unfortunately, this photo could not be uploaded: There was a problem with the image file.

... I logged into AIM using my friend's screenname and spoke to Mary.

The entire time we spoke, she was apologetic. And was shocked to hear that the Facebook handler deleted the comment I made linking to the original. She quickly posted up the link to my full version, and continued to apologize to me.

But I was really the one who had to apologize to her.

Yeah, she edited my entry badly and uploaded that one. But it was to my benefit. Without that, my entry couldn't have been uploaded at all. Never thought my lack of Facebook experience would screw me over like this.

I reasonably felt upset. But now I see that I was just being a prick. And for being a prick, they're going to reward me with a free swag pack filled with, something, I dunno. It's Aksys based, so it's damn good stuff too.

Looks like I got my Chicken McNuggets, but I dunno what I should do. I really enjoy playing Aksys titles. I appreciate their work, and actively participate in their polls for what I'd want to see next from their localization team... but, yeah. I feel like I need to make this up to them somehow.

Seppuku is over the top. Castration is out of the question. I like sex. Maybe I'll just buy a few titles as MSRP... I dunno. I just can't think of a way to get how remorseful I feel about my behavior to them.

If anybody has ideas, I'm all ears. I've got to apologize somehow.

Edit - I got home a bit ago and went to check my mail, and the "Swag Pack" has already arrived. It included:

1. Limited Edition BlazBlue 2 disk Soundtrack
2. Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics Folder
3. Guilty Gear XX Core Soundtrack
4. BlazBlue Official Comic Book
5. A small BlazBlue Poster
6. Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics Art Collection Book
7. BlazeBlue Folder
8. A small Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics poster
9. 5 Commandervideo stickers

...so much more than I deserved.

Oh, and here were the winners for the Contest btw:

1. D.M. (photo 12/50)
2. J.L. (photo 25/50)
3. C.C. (photo 9/50)