Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Prizes and Events...related

Ok, so I’ve been working on the details for the prize shipments. Starting next Friday, I will give a general overview of orders sent, outstanding orders remaining, etc. As far as people asking about things in the forums, I appreciate all of you guys and gals who have been helping us answer them. It’s a huge help to us knowing that many of you support us. Please point them to the blog as well. Thanks.

I want to talk about the “Events” that have been popping up in the JACT world. First off, we hope you enjoyed the first one. We appreciate all the participation and feedback during the first Event, the WoW-a-thon. There is a new one we’re about to start this Friday that is along the same lines as the first one. We are happy that DC Home has partnered with JACT to bring you this event.

This leads me to some misconceptions I want to clear and naturally prizing is the topic. Some have suggested that we stop with the “Events” and focus on shipping prizes. I’m here to tell you that without these “Events” prizes will have a hard time being shipped soon. It’s not a trade off…I mean, it’s not like we are sitting on a mountain of prizes and we just don’t ship them because we are too busy putting on the Events. It’s because of these Events that JACT will ship more and more prizes sooner.

In the latter part of last year, when normal sponsorships stopped rolling in, JACT was stuck with a dilemma which has lead to our current hiatus in shipping. Last year, sponsorship and prize costs rolled in at a nice healthy pace. Then, sponsorships seemed to dry up almost immediately. Thinking that it was just a matter of making new relationships, we kept operating like we always had. Soon we realized that we were in a different landscape and changes had to be made. It was going to take more time to regain sponsorships. What seemed like an instant was actually 3-4 months. We fell behind and this is the quandary we were left with. At the time, it seemed like we could just work a bit harder and make the right relationships. Unfortunately, things were a bit more serious than we anticipated.

With that being said, we are getting back on our feet. Events are great for us to get what we want and for you guys to get what you want. So if you like the Events, please support them. If you have any suggestions regarding them, please let us know. We just have to be more creative and persevere. JACT will get back on its feet…hopefully in time to please the masses once again!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

of the gamer, by the gamer, and for the gamer

Hey guys,
there are few things i wanted to point out here:

1) We could be jerks who care nothing of free speech and open mindedness and lock and delete this thread. We know that would be a lame thing to do and disrupt free speech, but we both know that it's done all the time on forums. Pretty lame right? Hell, it could be argued that this is terrible for our image. This may even hurt us when sponsors come here and get a feel for our community. We, however, feel this is great (for the most part) constructive criticism and (for our sake) well deserved praise. Yes, things could be better and yes everyone could be having the experience they all want with JACT, but unfortunately that's not the case. Let's try to be respectful of other's opinions. We are a community. We all like to game and apparently, we all like this world where our recreational gaming can produce some other benefits. We are open minded and that's how we approach all the threads.

2) If it seems like we are non-responsive, disrespectful to our users, or however else you feel we have neglected the communication you, consider this...we have been trying with some blog posts, answering emails, forum posts, etc. Because our staff is spread so thin, would you rather us be 100% perfect here or out pounding the pavement talking to sponsors and trying to get events set up so we can get back on track. Thanks to all that are responsive in the forums. Whether its positive or negative you are a spokesperson for us. Even negative comments, show that you care about the future of JACT. Otherwise, why waste your time here, right?

3) Many of you will say, "Well, that's not how you should run a business." I will ask how do you run a start up right now in this economy. Nevermind a startup...running a business right now is hard. This is a very serious statement: IF YOU HAVE A WAY TO HELP US OUT THROUGH ADVICE, SHARED CONTACTS, ETC., PLEASE SHARE!

4) Have we shut down and given up? HELL NO! How many people out there can honestly say they would take the plunge. No security, no guarantee, no glory, no one to pat them on the back...all we have is knowing that each and every day we come into work we are doing what we want. We are creating something we can be proud of. The people at JACT believe in it. We believe in it so much that we'd rather work nights so we can enjoy our crap paying day jobs. Can we go find other jobs that pay a hell of a lot more with a whole lot less stress. HELL YES! Call me crazy, but this is the fun part. I can't even imagine how much we'll appreciate this down the road. The highs just aren't as high if you haven't had the lowest of lows.

5) Who wants to be part of JACT? If being part of this community is causing you way too much anger and stress, for the sake of your happiness, health, and sanity, run as far away from us as possible. The last thing we want is to add stress to people's lives. We game to get away and relax. It is almost a Mike Tyson shot to the kidney to think that JACT could actually increase stress for you guys. I don't think it's what we envisioned when we started this gig. We want to provide enjoyment and an escape. We actually are pretty nice guys and genuinely want to do this for the good of the whole.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Hello friends, family, supporters, and critics!

Prizes have been shipping. As a matter of fact, more in the last 2 weeks than last month. I want to clear up some misconceptions regarding this order shipping process. The reason that orders have been slow to ship is not the fact that we are just "swamped" with orders. We are not sitting on a mound of prizes and just too lazy and overwhelmed with the physical labor of shipping them out. The problem arose when we budgeted a certain amount for prizes based on sponsorship support. Because many sponsors revamped their budgets, we were faced with a good few months of back logged, non-sponsored prizes. So as we are getting new sponsors, the older orders will gradually be taken care of. I hope this makes since to everyone.