Like many other time wasters I was horrified today when Scrabulous was yanked off of Facebook. I had spent weeks in “training” against the robot on their site with the aim of making Gary Kasparov proud and actually beating the robot (on level 10). It finally happened and so I launched into several competitive games with my RL friends on FB….when I awoke to the nightmare of the switch being pulled, so to speak…just when I was, gasp, actually winning.

I get it, it’s copyright infringement and Hasbro and Mattel have to threaten legal action. But could those boneheads at least applaud a ‘triple word’ score marketing idea? Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla are branding geniuses as they succeeded in updating and re-contextualizing the fun (but crusty) brainiac board game.

“It’s crack for writers,” said one of my online competitors. Speaking of which, I noticed Facebook friends of mine who are pro writers like Neal Pollack posting status updates to reflect their horror at this latest, er ‘move.’ An architect friend of mine commented tonight that the handful of Scrabulous addicts in his office who usually spend lunches boning up on their vocab through the game seemed to wander around aimlessly (first the bee confusion epidemic, now this). They even tried to invent games at the table of the restaurant they were (forced to dine) in (because of the lack of Scrabulous). My friend lamented that they’d forgotten the art of conversation.

Anyway, I signed the pro-Scrabulous petition and would suggest that the folks at Hasbro and Mattel get a clue. Instead of suing the Indian bros, they should hire them to work on their marketing team.

Posted by Shana Ting Lipton