Scrabulous Returns To Facebook, As Wordscraper

porcupine8 writes "Good news for those that have had a hole in their heart (and Facebook profile) since Hasbro forced Facebook to remove Scrabulous over copyright and trademark issues. The creators of Scrabulous have wasted no time in tweaking the game and have launched a new tile-based game called Wordscraper. In addition to changing the name, they have changed the board look so as not to directly copy the colors, etc of a Scrabble board, and have even made provisions for players to create their own board layout! Interested Scrabulous fans can add the application now. Only time will tell if the changes were extensive enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers at bay."

DIY boards = infinite cleverness

So if Hasbro takes them to court for infringing the board design (which IIRC is far shakier than the misuse of the trademark) then they can just delete that. The immediately available user-created boards which look like original Scrabble are, of course, not Wordscraper's fault.

Re:DIY boards = infinite cleverness

Meh, now Hasbro is going to be mad. Not only you get more points for making Scrabulous when compared to making Scrabble, now you can get even more by making Wordscraper!

hexagonal scrabble?

I googled this and saw at least five different software versions. I presume you could also play on a 3D tesselation, should you be able design a convenient user-interface. (I guess it wounld start to look like sparse building girders.) I wonder if Hasbro has gone after any of these.

Re:hexagonal scrabble?

If you threw in some pentagons, you could play Scrabble on the outside of a buckyball.

Re:hexagonal scrabble?

Let's not forget that Hasbro hasn't so much as a patent on Scrabble itself, just a vague claim to copyright on the rules (which may not apply) and a trademark (Scrabble name, and perhaps the appearance of the board and tiles). If there's no risk of mistakenly assuming that the Scrabble-likes are actually Scrabble, then there's no trademark infringement to answer for.

It could have gone a lot better....

So far, I like it. The custom boards are going to take some getting used to. I am in one game where every tile appears to be a double word score or more, and we are seeing scores of 4000 in some places.

I much prefer the sparse tile versions, where it takes a LOT of planning to get a good score.

Right now, i don't like it as much as scrabble, but I am willing to keep playing until things start to settle.

In my personal opinion, scrabulous was always in clear violation of the law (I am not interested in discussing the ethics of that), and the takedown was inevitable.

If Hasbro had learned from scrabulous instead of acting like spazzes, I would have switched to playing their client.

They needed to release a client equal in speed, slickness and functionality. Then they should have negotiated a wrap up period of several days with the makers of scrabulous, where no new games could be created, but existing games could be wrapped up.

They did neither, and you won't see me switching to play their version as a result.

Use this original Scrabble layout then...

I've just recreated the Scrabble layout. You can play a original Scrabble game on facebook by clicking this link:

http://apps.facebook.com/wordscraper/?action=newgame&similarto=54248 [facebook.com]

I know I'd rather play a real Scrabble layout on Wordscraper than to use anything else. Enjoy.

Re:Use this original Scrabble layout then...

One thing you forgot is that the middle tile needs to be a double word score. Went ahead and fixed that: http://apps.new.facebook.com/wordscraper/?action=newgame&similarto=56609 [facebook.com]

Re:It could have gone a lot better....

I also park illegally on occasion, and sometimes drive a few miles above the speed limit. I have been known file my taxes late, and have stolen music by downloading it. Sometimes I accidentally throw away paper without recycling it.

Scrabulous was a popular, well implemented version of a game I own no less than 4 boards for. i probably have purchased anywhere from 10 -15 boards over the past 20 years.

I enjoyed it, so I played it. Now that wordscraper is available, I will play that.

Those are all illegal, getting caught has penalties, and I know that. I may not agree with the laws, but when I get caught I pay the consequences, without whining or trying to come up with some sort of convoluted justification for my actions.

Not all laws are equal in my books. Murder is not a law I break with the same equanimity as a local parking ordinance.

If you have managed to live your life ethically pure, then I applaud you.

I actually registered on FaceBook

I am not a big fan of social anything, but I actually registered on face book and downloaded the wordscraper client. I did this in my way of protest to Hasbro and their heavy handed stupidity. With that being said, the wordscraper client is buggy (it is in beta to be fair) but it sure is fun.

How could a company like Hasbro, hiring a company like EA mess up something that should be relatively easy to convert into a program. I am not a programmer, but I would think that a game like Scrabble would be easy to make into an online game. Certainly easier then something like Age of Conan.

DK

Yeah!

A
B
O
U
TIME

Good Exposure

I'm sure the creators loved all the press attention they have been recieving lately... additionally, I bet Hasbro regrets not giving these guys job offers rather than legal complaints.

Wordscraper also wins the word score!

Scrabulous = 14
Wordscraper = 19

A better choice of letters in more than one way.

ABBCELRS

or ABCFHKORSU would be far superior names...

This is over.

Scrabulous was taken down because the name and visual presentation were too similar. Game mechanics are explicitly not protected by any branch of law. (In fact, I warned them in email six months ago that this was coming, and that they should rename/reskin their app.)

Hasbro may try to sue again, but from here, if they do, it's barratry. Wordscraper is now safe.

is it just me...

...or am I the only one, this far down in the comments, to initially see "words craper" as the name of this app? Reminds me of the guy who named Titslinger who invented the bra.

Re:Copyright broken

Not copyright. Trademark infringement [timesonline.co.uk]. Entirely different legal structure...

Re:Copyright broken

No, copyright too. You can't copyright the idea of how you play the game, but you can copyright the board artwork. Of course, you can significantly aletr the board artwork so that it's different enough to avoid copyright infringement without changing how the game is played. Most game ripoffs do just this.

Sadly, the Scrabulous guys didn't take this step, and they could still be facing a lot of trouble over that. The new game solves this problem - guess they finally bothered to care what minimal steps they needed to take to be legal.

Re:Copyright broken

You can't copyright the idea of how you play the game, but you can copyright the board artwork.

There is nothing broken about this. At all. This is, in fact, exactly as it should be. Otherwise, all someone would have to do to duplicate my game would be to change the title.

Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here.

Re:Copyright broken

so, who owns chess, and who owns shogi?

Nobody, just like Shakespeare and The Odessey. A basic familiarity with the law might help you here. Nobody ever filed for or was granted protection on those items, and if they had been, they'd be several thousands of years expired by now.

and if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble?

Brand recognition. People periodically try to replace Scrabble. It happens every several years.

the only game i can recall having 'dupes' are kismet 'the modern game of yacht' and yahtzee.

This is primarily an indication that you don't know much about the games market. Games that perenially get copied include Uno, Sorry, Yahtzee, Connect 4, Mille Bornes, Scrabble, Rubik's Cube, Battleship, and on and on the list goes.

Perhaps you don't understand market forces. Clones aren't absent because they're illegal. They're absent because nobody buys them.

Re:Copyright broken

Actually, in this case I think the claim was that Scrabulous was infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. IMHO trademarks *should* last as long as the company is in operation. There's no reason why a company should have to lose its trade name over the course of time.

Re:Copyright broken

I think the point is the length of the copyright.

You think wrong. It's not a copyright issue at all, and there is no time frame attached at all. The issue is that Scrabulous was a brand ripoff. Game clones are okay. Brand clones aren't.

Copyright and trademark are about as related as boats and cars. Please put more effort into debate. It's really annoying for a debate about cars to have people keep saying "but the problem is the water level in the lake." Trademarks do not, and should not, expire. It doesn't matter if Microsoft has been around for 80 years; nobody else should ever be able to claim to be Microsoft. This is a trademark issue because the company needs to be able to protect the brand. Scrabble clones can be released. Scrabble, the brand, is still S+R / Hasbro's property.

If you don't understand the difference between copyright/trademark, or between a product and a brand, you really need to stay out of discussions like this.

Re:Copyright broken

Because this is not a copyright issue, there is no sixty year timeframe involved.

I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this [pcworld.com] one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this [cnet.com] one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this [nytimes.com] one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."

But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.

As a game designer, I would like to remind you that in the eyes of the law, for a very good reason, game designs are not art.

As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.

Spend less time worrying about what should or should not be, and more time understanding the situation correctly.

Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.

Re:Copyright broken

How long has Scrabble been out, 60 years? And because of the crazy long copyright terms now, innovation is being stifled.

If you define 'innovation' as copying someone else's idea in almost every detail.

No, Wordscraper

The name only has one 'p' and it's from the word scrape, as in "I need to scrape this Hasbro from the bottom of my shoes.", not scrap, as in "Hasbro has always been the bottom of the scrap heap."