- Share This Post
- submit
- 1
-
Sparkle (0)
A word game makes the news in the New York Times. Does that sound plausible to you? It's not just plausible, it's real. The wildly popular Facebook game Scrabulous, an obvious knockoff of the board game Scrabble, hit the news when Hasbro and Mattel declared Scrabulous "piracy."
According to the NYTimes article,
In January, they denounced Scrabulous as piracy and threatened legal action against its creators, two brothers in Calcutta named Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla who run a software development company. Both Hasbro and Mattel said they were hoping for a solution that would not force them to shut down the game.
An aside I can't resist. This article was in Business section, not in the Fashion and Style section.
The game gets 700,000 people a day playing on Facebook, and brings in about $25,000 a month in pageviews for the Agarwalla brothers. Hasbro and Mattel don't think that's right. But the Scrabulous fans, who are admittedly fanatic about the game, don't want to see it go away.
Caroline McCarthy, who admits to having four Scrabulous games in progress, wrote in Big surprise: Scrabble manufacturer targets 'Scrabulous' online game about the reaction of the fans to the news that their game is in jeopardy.
That noise you just heard was the sound of several hundred thousand procrastination-happy Facebook users gasping in panic.
Josh Quittner at Fortune reports that Hasbro, manufacturer of the timeless board game Scrabble, is trying to shut down Scrabulous, an unauthorized electronic version of Scrabble that has gained a rabid following on Facebook. The reasons are obvious: licensing. Scrabulous profits from advertising revenue. Hasbro, citing infringement, wants to see it scrapped.
At the Kamla Bhlatt Show, Kamla notes in a post called What news of Scrabulous
Now, as many of you know the Agarwalla brothers from Calcutta are in a bit of a tight spot about their online game.
Althouse, in a post called "Please God, I Have So Little: Don’t Take Scrabulous Too." said,
That's the name of a Facebook group, mentioned in this NYT article about what is a difficult problem for the Hasbro and Mattel, which own the rights to the board game Scrabble. Scrabulous plainly rips off Scrabble, so the companies could use the law to crush Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who created Scrabulous (and make $25,000 a month on advertising). But the Agarwallas have made Scrabble popular among huge numbers of young people, and they are now: 1. motivated to buy the board game, and 2. primed to hate any bad corporations that take away their fun.
How much is Scrabulous hurting Hasbro and Mattel? Girl uninterruped wrote in Dorking Out that she thinks it's helping, not hurting.
The funny thing is that the Hasbro corp is all up in arms about Scrabulous, saying that it violates their copyright. And okay, it probably does. But. How much money is Hasbro really losing from all of this? I've always loved Scrabble, but Scrabulous has fueled my love to inferno heights. In addition to the Internet games, the boy makes me play at least two rounds a night. We now own THREE boards - the lazy Susan version with the dark brown tiles, Travel Scrabble, and Super Scrabble (a Christmas gift from my mom). We buy Scrabble-related merchandise (including the official dictionary). We're planning to join the International Scrabble Society or whatever it's called.
My point is, the popularity of the online version has to be spurring on new sales of the actual board game. Doesn't it? More and more I hear of people who are obsessing over Scrabble. So, in a way, isn't it keeping this classic game alive with a whole new generation of players?
Catch Up Lady wrote about her conversion to Scrabulous in The Unbearable Lightness of Scrabulous. She's not likely to want to see it go.
Prior to about two weeks ago I was a reluctant and infrequent Facebooker. Even when all my friends migrated over from Friendster(!) and MySpace I still really only logged on to accept friend requests (I'm kind of a big deal.)
That was until I installed the Scrabulous application at the behest of my friend Anthony who promised it would "change my life". Oh. My. God. In about 24 hours I went from a once a week Facebooker to logging in 3 - 5 times a day (because in a genius move Scrabulous doesn't ping you when it's your play - causing you to casually stalk your own games.)
As noted earlier, Hasbro and Mattel are trying to reach some sort of
