For those of you who haven't played Scrabulous, the Facebook application that mimics and updates Scrabble, it's an ingenious little program. Players challenge each other, send messages, log in at their own leisure (so I could make a move now, and my opponent could make hers tomorrow), shuffle their letters, trash talk -- it's as clever an adaptation of the game to the digital age as could be imagined. And it's damn popular. If someone had told me that a Scrabble knock-off would become a hugely popular obsession among plugged-in twentysomethings, I would have thought that unlikely. Yet here we are.At least for a moment. Hasbro, demonstrating the vision and foresight of so many such companies, has descended with lawyers to, presumably, shut Scrabulous down. On some level, they have a point: Scrabulous isn't just reminiscent of Scrabble -- it is Scrabble. But it's also a massively successful program bringing the tired boardgame to a vast new audience and, better yet, working entirely in concert with the physical version, from which it's actually quite different (you don't play in person, in the same room, etc). So why not...buy it? Hasbro is faced with two choices. Trash their name to millions -- literally -- of newly minted Scrabble aficionados, who could be a huge new market, by shutting down Scrabulous. Or take Scrabulous over. As Josh Quittner writes, there's a very smart way to conclude this. "If I were an evil genius running a board games company whose product line spanned everything from Monopoly to Clue, I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win! If I were compassionate, I’d even cut in the guys who did all the work for a percentage point or two to keep the site running." Then there's the dumb way. In my experience, large, lumbering corporations blushing over a copyright violation tend to settle things the dumb way. The over-litigious way. But Scrabulous has done Hasbro's work for it -- ported their game online, made it popular, built them a fan base. They can pay off the two dudes who made it, and reap the rewards. (Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Terriem.) SAVE -- OR BUY -- SCRABULOUS!
For those of you who haven't played Scrabulous, the Facebook application that mimics and updates Scrabble, it's an ingenious little program. Players challenge each other, send messages, log in at their own leisure (so I could make a move now, and my opponent could make hers tomorrow), shuffle their letters, trash talk -- it's as clever an adaptation of the game to the digital age as could be imagined. And it's damn popular. If someone had told me that a Scrabble knock-off would become a hugely popular obsession among plugged-in twentysomethings, I would have thought that unlikely. Yet here we are.At least for a moment. Hasbro, demonstrating the vision and foresight of so many such companies, has descended with lawyers to, presumably, shut Scrabulous down. On some level, they have a point: Scrabulous isn't just reminiscent of Scrabble -- it is Scrabble. But it's also a massively successful program bringing the tired boardgame to a vast new audience and, better yet, working entirely in concert with the physical version, from which it's actually quite different (you don't play in person, in the same room, etc). So why not...buy it? Hasbro is faced with two choices. Trash their name to millions -- literally -- of newly minted Scrabble aficionados, who could be a huge new market, by shutting down Scrabulous. Or take Scrabulous over. As Josh Quittner writes, there's a very smart way to conclude this. "If I were an evil genius running a board games company whose product line spanned everything from Monopoly to Clue, I might do this: Wait until someone comes up with an excellent implementation of my games and does the hard work of coding and debugging the thing and signing up the masses. Then, once it got to scale, I’d sweep in and take it over. Let the best pirate site win! If I were compassionate, I’d even cut in the guys who did all the work for a percentage point or two to keep the site running." Then there's the dumb way. In my experience, large, lumbering corporations blushing over a copyright violation tend to settle things the dumb way. The over-litigious way. But Scrabulous has done Hasbro's work for it -- ported their game online, made it popular, built them a fan base. They can pay off the two dudes who made it, and reap the rewards. (Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Terriem.) 
