AUGUST 4, 2008

Will I Beat Gayle At Wordscraper?

Earlier I wrote about the Facebook application that was sweeping swiffering the office: Scrabulous (I also wrote that I was going to beat Gayle in Scrabulous and I did.) I’m sad to write that the creators of Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, have taken down the game after they were hit with a lawsuit from Hasbro. An official version of Scrabble on Facebook is in beta test stage on Facebook.

As expected the Facebook community is reeling from the loss of everyone’s favorite time-waster. I particularly enjoyed reading Conde Nast Porfolio, which posted reactions they read from Facebook’s News Feed. However, I am happy to say that we do not have to be sad for long.

The Brothers Agarwalla are releasing a new game very similar to Scrabulous called Wordscraper. The game includes customizable rules and a different design- probably an effort to avoid future lawsuits. The customizable features of this new game can be used to create boards that resemble the familiar Scrabble/Scrabulous layout. Is this going to be enough to stop another lawsuit? Ethan Horwitz over at King and Spalding told the AP he doesn’t think so:

It’s going to come down to the little things like squares and circles and double, triple and so on…What they’ve done is taking a step in the right direction, but I don’t think it’s a big enough step.

As of this writing the game has 67,302 active users- nowhere near the half million that Scrabulous had, and less than the 85,237 that are using the new official version of Scrabble. I wonder if the game will be able to attract Scrabulous fans back into the fold. Besides the IP issues this case has brought about, I’m curious to see what Facebook users value more - being able to play Scrabble online no matter who makes it, or the innovative thinking of the Agarwalla brothers who thought of bringing Scrabble online first.