Tag: scrabble

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EA Scrabble Goes Live for N. American Facebookers. Scrabulous Killer? Hell No.

I’ve been toying with EA Scrabble on Facebook for the past week or so as a beta tester and I must say, I’m underwhelmed. It is slow, clunky, overly stuffed with graphics, and in many ways reminiscent of a Flash landing page that just slows everything down. Mattel launched Scrabble for Facebook over 3 months ago, and obviously it wasn’t a priority for EA (who licensed the games digital rights in North America) to put up a practical solution that would appear to be not just taxing on any old computer, but most definitely on a mobile device.

ea scrabble on facebook

That said, I haven’t had much opportunity to play against anyone *I know* so if you’re interested, hit me up on facebook and i’ll invite you into a game!

Until then, I maintain that the simple, straightforward and more Scrabble-like interface of Scrabulous is superior. And I’ll keep playing my current standby, the Boggle-like game Scramble.

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Mattel Launches SCRABBLE® Facebook App Outside North America

Talk about late to the game and then having the table pulled out from under you. What’s the point? Just gauging the interest? Still in cahoots with the developers of Scrabulous or perhaps working on some sort of partnership / licensing agreement?

Either way, before bothering to read the articles on the first-ever Hasbro-licensed online Scrabble game (in both the NY Times and Mashable), I figured I’d just launch right into it. I never imagined it would stack up in anyway to Scrabulous, but, as a Social Media experiment, felt it was my duty to at least try it.

Not until AFTER I installed the App on my profile do I get the following message:

scrabble facebook app

The Scrabble legacy is a complicated one. Turns out Mattel has worldwide distribution rights, ex-US and Canada, whereas Hasbro controls the game in North America, as Rafat Ali explained at PaidContent. Mattel partnered with Real Networks last year to produce “casual games,” and purportedly either take over, co-opt, or otherwise undo Scrabulous, however, Hasbro, for its share, has a conflicting digital agreement with Electronic Arts.

I’m not gonna lie about my location just to play your silly game — after all, I’ve got the deluxe, tangible edition right here. Just please don’t make Scrabulous go away!