Life for Scrabulous Addicts Is R-O-U-G-H
But while some are coming to terms with post-Scrabulous life, others are registering their anger by joining (what else?) a Facebook group called “We Hate Hasbro for Killing Scrabulous.”
What are points-seeking wordsmiths supposed to do with their newly discovered hours of free time? They could spend time investigating the new Facebook interface, or pick up a good book. Or they could check out the Agarwalla brothers’ new application, Wordscraper, which bears some resemblance to Scrabble, but which the developers hope is sufficiently different from Scrabble to render it litigation-proof. (A recent attempt at playing this replacement game found the response to be buggy and slow, which the developers say they’re aware of and are fixing.)
I was one of the lucky Scrabuladdicts: even before I’d caught wind of a potential lawsuit, I’d moved on to WordTwist (where you twist letters into various word combinations) and Scramble (like Boggle, in which you have to identify the words in a block of letters).
Maybe it was intuitive, or a defense mechanism, or the pervasive suspicion that nothing gold — or addictive — can stay. But now, as these games provide succor and companionship in the time period after the fall of Scrabulous, I gather them to me in an appreciative embrace. But still: Scrabulous, I’ll never forget you.
Cry me a river.
“Online Scrabble players…”
The urge to read on after this line was just too overwhelming.
The real lesson here is that US Copyright laws are insane. They grant a monopoly, essentially forever. Precious intellectual output is tied up far longer than it should be, mocking the constitutional intent for Copyright.
Patent law, which arguably covers inventions usually more important, grants only a 20 year monopoly (which is still too long in many fields).
The frustrated Scrabulous players should be spelling letters to their congress-critters.
Oh, bah. There’s a half-dozen online Scrabble communities. This only got any airtime because it’s Facebook.
(The real-life Scrabble tournament players are at http://www.isc.ro)