We’re back! The last few weeks have been pretty whirlwind with most or all of the community team out of the office on vacation and traveling for work. Kellie was in Tokyo for TGS, and Clumsy (Julian) was in Sydney for the EB Games show. Because of all of this, the regular Friday giveaways went on hold for a while… but they are on hold no longer. We’ve got some great prizes for you this week, all purchased in Tokyo’s Joypolis gift store and carried straight to our offices and onto your hands.

On the Block

1. Sonic Joypolis-branded sweet chocolate cake. You know we love desserts, and we are happy to share!

2. Sonic and Tails and Joypolis-branded hard candies. Each bag of candy comes inside a blue Sonic the Hedgehog bag.

3. Sonic and Tails and Joypolis-branded hard candies. Each bag of candy comes inside a blue Sonic the Hedgehog bag.

How it Works

1. You must be following us on Twitter to be eligible. (If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can create one by going to http://www.twitter.com and click the green “get started — join!” button in the center of the page.)

2. At random times on Friday, we will announce the prize we are giving away, a word or phrase, and what number of response you need to be to win. Send us a direct message (DM) via Twitter and be that number to win the prize. (@ replies do not count as entries!) We only accept one direct message per person per prize!

Example:

We tweet “GIVEAWAY: Sonic T-shirt, size L. Be the 15th person to DM “Sonic Adventure” to win!”

You see this, and want to win it, so you send us a direct message that says “Sonic Adventure”. If you are the 15th person to do so, you are the winner!

Quotation marks do not matter, capitalization does not matter, but spelling does matter!

3. All followers are eligible to win all prizes, unless a restriction is noted. Restrictions are usually due to the prize being region-locked. For example, US games that won’t work on UK gaming systems. There may also be age restrictions due to the rating of the game.

4. We will announce the winner on our Twitter feed once eligibility is confirmed.

Other Assorted Information:

• Free Stuff Friday duties alternate between the London and San Francisco offices and are done during business hours (usually mid-morning) in our respective time zones.
• No, you can’t know what number message you were – so please don’t ask! We will tell you that the information is classified!
• If you have questions during the giveaway, please contact us with an @reply. As you can imagine, we get a whole lot of direct messages during the contests and there is a very good chance we will miss your question if it is sent as a DM.

How to Send Direct Messages on Twitter

Due to a change in our account status with Twitter, you should be able to send us direct messages without us following you if you are using the Twitter website. However, third-party applications may not allow you to.

There are a few ways to send us a Direct Message on Twitter. The easiest way is:

1. Log in to your Twitter account.
2. Click on the person icon and select Direct messages from the drop down menu.
3. You’ll see a pop up showing your Direct message history. Click the New message button, highlighted below.
4. In the address box, type the name or username (SEGA) of the person you wish to send a message to.
5. Enter your message and click Send message.

You may also select the “direct messages” tab from your Twitter homepage, and select SEGA from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Again, if you don’t see our name there, it’s probably because we’re not following you. Let us know, and we’ll follow you. If you still have questions on sending direct messages, please visit Twitter’s Help Section.

There are also many Twitter clients that you can use instead of using the website. These include TweetDeck, Twitteriffic, Tweetie, and Twhirl. Each of these programs works differently, so you’ll want to figure out how to send a direct message on the program you use. If you want to send us a test message, we’ll let you know if we received it or not. Please make sure your message says “test” somewhere.