Yesterday, one day after taking down Scrabuluos in the U.S. and Canada in response to a lawsuit from Hasbro, the Indian brothers behind Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, released a brand new crossword-like game on Facebook called Wordscraper. The brothers have obviously been preparing this countermove for a long time. Wordscraper is designed to get around any of the intellectual property claims Hasbro has made against Scrabulous, especially the trademark infringement claims. The name is not a rip-off of Scrabble, the board looks very different, and there are even some new twists to the rules.
The brothers have even foregone the familiar square tiles for circles. Quite frankly, I don’t like this. It hurts my eyes. (Call me a traditionalist). It all blends together and makes it hard to grok the board at a single glance.
The gameplay is much better. Wordscraper is like Scrabble with wild board tiles. You can create your own board by putting assigning different point values to each space where a player puts her letters. For instance, instead of a set pattern, you can move double-word or triple-letter score tiles around the board before you start playing, and you can go crazy and stick in quintuple-word scores. (Go easy on those).
When Scrabulous was taken down, it had half a million daily active users and Hasbro’s/Electronic Arts’ official Facebook Scrabble game had only about 15,000. Two days later, the official Scrabble beta is up to 63,000 daily active users. Wordscraper has 3,600 daily active users. Now the race is on. Where will the bulk of Scrabulous fans go?
Wordscraper has a good chance of unseating the official Scrabble. (In a TechCrunch poll with 2878 respondents, 66 percent think that Hasbro went too far with its lawsuit and will suffer a resulting consumer backlash). Just please, do something about those circles. They make me dizzy.
I think the original one was great…but its nice effort form Indian Brothers. India Rocks…
I wonder why they didn’t switch between the take down? so they can retain all their users?
The hasbro can claim stuff like these users are due to you using the Scrabble name.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a different legal entity behind this all designed to protect interests and deflect lawyers.
You got to admire the brothers’ creativity. For that alone I’ll add this to my profile.
I kind of like the circles. Maybe you just need more sleep Erick
It’s trivial to recreate the classic word game we all know and love as well. They just have to figure out how to display letter values (and perhaps edit these) on the round tiles.
I agree, the original one was much better. I really don’t want to play this version -
Dare I actually support the original copyright holders and just move to Hasbro’s version of Scrabble? — or maybe I’ll just go back to playing WordWhomp on Pogo…
scrabble is scrabble…if you enjoy the game, play it however. why cry about a company upholding their product?
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Hasbro enforcing their trademark. However, the “official” game is slow, clumsy and poorly designed. There’s a new generation of gamers that doesn’t have any particular brand loyalty–they just want something that works well. And so far, Scrabulous is the superior product. If Hasbro/EA had come up with a better alternative, they’d be more likely to win over Scrabulous users. But as it is now, it doesn’t measure up.
I’ll stick to Slingo
oh thanks for reminding me, Slingo – now I’ll never get any writing done
Since it’s circles… Can you go diagonally? Looks like it would work on this board to me. Perhaps they could put a backdrop color that connects all the letters in a given word to give it that continuity that the squares had by default.
So like a mix between Scrabble and a word search puzzle? Now there’s an idea! Quick, patent it *wink*
The new Scrabulous – Thrive or Fail[VOTE]? http://snurl.com/388d6
Here is another entry in the word game wars that will soon be available on Facebook and is a much better game for intelligent people.
http://www.wildwords.us
can someone plz disable html in comments? i’m tired of people spamming their sites.
MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!
http://www.yout...h?v=uE9Dgp4zlPg
The official Facebook scrabble game sucks. I wonder what’s going to happen if Hasbro simply copycats the original Scrabulous design. The brothers can’t claim copyright violations since they’ve violated them in the first place…
Hasbro would’ve been far better off if they had just hired the makers of scrabulous to develop it into the official scrabble game.
That would’ve been, the nice, open, honest way of doing business that internet users expect nowadays. Hasbro better prepare for the backlash
From what I understood about previous articles, they have some contractual arrangement with EA and so hiring these two guys to build the official Scrabble Facebook application may have had some issues with that.
If not, then I certainly think that would have been a better route for Hasbro to take.
I’m going to try and play a but of Wordscraper and support the underdog.
so the 7 figure offer they got prior to having it pulled was an honest way of doing business?
*wasn’t
Wow, that’s a really brilliant move. Bravo, guys!
With no more scrabulous, the end of the world is near. How does this new app make money?????? http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
Speaking as an indie board game publisher I hope this teaches Hasbro a lesson.
They could have so easily embraced and applauded Scrabulous
Our game GiftTRAP ( http://www.gifttrap.com/ ) has been voted “Best Party Game” by both Games Magazine and Creative Child Mag and yet I’d trade it in an instant for the exposure and attention that Scrabulous has brought to Scrabble. Who wouldn’t – Not Hasbro or Mattel that’s who!
We have a classic innovators challenge, being first in class as a virtual gift-exchange game is hard. Hasbro on the other hand has a cash cow that’s in maintain mode. Scrabulous has revitalized their brand like a good Samaritan.
I’ve published my own app (I even learned Ruby on Rails to do it) and I know how hard it is to earn attention. Hasbro should have had smaller egos and less dominant lawyers. I thought it was very amusing that hackers took their site down.
It’s funny but the whole virtual gift trend has really helped up with Facebook’s Gift app and Free Gifts as good examples. Over 200 millions virtual gifts have been exchanged.
Here’s my app if you are curious.
http://apps.new...k.com/gifttrap/
The difference with our app is that it’s a game and your friend gets to choose their gift. The question is did you pick it right. Sound like a familiar problem?
You’ve got to love the power of an angry crowd.
If anyone gets bored or word games they can head on down to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy of GiftTRAP.
It’s probably right next to Scrabble and Bananagrams (another new game that’s gaining traction.
Scrabble’s problem is they are the No1 undisputed word game. No other game even comes close.
It’s a well known fact in the board game industry that many publishers shy away from word games simply because of Scrabble’s dominance.
My prediction is we’ll see Wordscraper in stores in the not too distant future and if it outsells Scrabble that would be just too funny.
I’ve believed for a while the next trend is to build brands online by taking them into stores to reach out to a new crowd.
Webkinz and Club Penguin are great examples. That was always our strategy with GiftTRAP.
I keep waiting for a Facebook product to hit the stores, perhaps it’s a game.
haha Indians always have a backup plan! Congrats to the brothers!
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
they should use octagons rather than circles
Yeah, octagons rule! And it could still have a square grid but just use octagon (or round) tiles, which would be easier to look at.
Maybe Bananagrams will beat them both!
http://www.casu...ms-for-Facebook
Scrabulous isn’t even a copyright infringement.
You can’t copyright the rules of a game, only the specific way they are expressed.
You can copyright the graphic design of a game board, for instance, like the word SCRABBLE running down the side, and the little triangles around the colored squares, but you can’t copyright the idea of putting colored squares on a grid and acting as double word scores. Cloning a game is not copyright infringement.
I think this new game is not bad. Looks original in feel too. I think it will do well with very young people. But the tiles are too small. Why could they no use square tiles? Does Scrabble own the patent to square tiles?
With that they could then ad quadruple letter, and quadruple words as kids love high scores. Scrabble does not have that. Leaving it up to the player to rearrange is pointless. Being an avid scrabble player since age 10 or so, I know the game and love it.
The scrab-fab-brothers are very creative to come up with the online version of the classic game and now the alternative, so quickly! My supports are for them … I am already on the Wordscraper!
I have been trying to get in touch with Hasbro and finally got a response. See below from the Consumer Affairs Department:
We understand your passion for the SCRABBLE brand. In fact, we have been hard at work creating a variety of great new ways to enjoy SCRABBLE, from the classic board game, to playing in the digital space on the iPod, iPhone, pogo.com online game site, and now, social networking on Facebook.
Some people have asked us why we couldn’t coexist with Scrabulous, and compete head-to-head. In the toy and game business, we have many legitimate competitors, and we welcome healthy competition as our industry strives to provide the best entertainment value for consumers everywhere. Scrabulous did not represent legitimate competition. Scrabulous was an infringement, it was unlawful, and we took the necessary action, similar to what the recording industry did when kids were posting music to illegal sites and allowing their friends to copy the music for free.
As you know, Hasbro filed suit on July 24 to protect our intellectual property rights. However, in deference to SCRABBLE fans like you, we waited to take this action until we had an authentic alternative to offer players. We know that many of you are closely scrutinizing the new SCRABBLE application developed by Electronic Arts. Please note that this application remains in a beta stage on Facebook, and both EA and Hasbro are monitoring feedback from fans, which will help us as we continue to improve the experience leading up to the official launch scheduled for the first half of August.
In closing, we want you to know that SCRABBLE is a very important game and brand for Hasbro. We value the passion of our fans, and we promise that we will continue to innovate in providing the best SCRABBLE experiences possible
In addition, when it comes to new product ideas, Hasbro does not accept ANYTHING from the general public. They won’t even entertain the idea of listening to their users as they feel that:
1. Alienating their customers is a good way to improve their products
2. Do not have ANY CLUE WHATSOEVER about the power of web 2.0, specifically in the way of collaboration.
They feel that great ideas will only come from employees and partners.
How many points do you get for the word “Deuchebags”?
Hasbro doesn’t accept product ideas for the same reason movie studios don’t accept scripts.
Wordscraper will pass legal muster.
But unless they can leverage the audience they built on the back of the scrabble brand, wordscraper will go nowhere.
I was playing Scrabulous because it made me practice Scrabble. This version, which is also ugly, does not interest me a bit. Predicted fail.
I’m going to create a new country. I will call it Bindia. Bindia will have 2 billion computer science grads, who will all work for 5 cents an hour.
Take that India, Bindia is gonna whoop your bhangra luvin ass!
Since user can set board layout in Wordscraper, it can be set to look exactly like Scrable. And this has function to make layout similar to already existing layout by someone else, thus giving direct “similarto” link http://apps.fac...similarto=50643
Some ppl of US are now using some british proxy to access scrabulous, which they will give up soon. And it would have been wise if scrabulous brothers themselves redirect traffic of scrabulous to wordscraper. Erick, i feel u giving undue importance to this.
Please explain to me how you created the board. I did not understand how to go about this
We non-US users still have Scrabulous!
Hah! One in the eye to you yanks!
P.S. On a more constructive note
Scrabulous is showing up this morning as having 304,044 daily active users, so Scrabble will still have a L O N G way to go to convince non-US/Canada users to switch to theirs.
I imagine most of us will be playing against non-US/Canada players, although those who play against US/Canada users will I guess add Scrabble (perhaps?) but continue with Scrabulous against opponents who also still have it available.
i told them to do so… way back then…
http://tekchakr...arwal-brothers/
good move guys.
havent any of you heard of wordbiz1.7 its just as good.