Why I Love Scrabulous

IRVINE, California - June 27 (AP) - Some months ago I first logged into Facebook, the social networking website, and like many was surprised to find out how easy it was to connect up with old friends. I liked the interface, but I kind of viewed it as a cross between Classmates and MySpace and kind of left it at that. Neat, somewhat useful, but probably another flash in the pan.

Then I discovered Facebook games.

At first, I found the invites I got to games on Facebook annoying, but eventually I relented and played some Warbook and Knighthood and SpaceFlight. It was sort of fun, and a lot cheaper than playing any of the online games I had tried out in the past few years. But then I loaded up Scrabulous and my world changed. And in a good way.

Based in some degree on the board that was popularized by Scrabble, which is owned by Hasbro, this game takes the concept to the next level. Now you can play a similar game across the distance, and take turns that can be as long as you want. It's like those games of chess you see in movies where people do one turn a week. Or you can play in real time - if you are both there. Social networking + board game = magic.

I'm not alone. PC World recently named it one of the 100 Best Products of 2008. No wonder Hasbro is trying to sue the Scrabulous creators for copyright infringement. But I imagine they are mostly kicking themselves that they didn't invent it first. If I were them, I would just buy Scrabulous. But if the Scrabulous folks ever monetize the game somehow, maybe Hasbro should look out. They might end up buying Hasbro!

So what makes Scrabulous so great? Well, for one thing my mother-in-law plays it. No, really, that is a huge deal. My mother-in-law, Lord bless her, is not a big fan of the World Wide Web and all that goes on across it. It's not that she is adverse to technology, its just that she has a life, and would rather talk to people face to face than type at them, and has never seen the appeal of blogs, sims, avatars and all that stuff. Until now.

Perhaps it is the simplicity of the interface, or the fact that you can really choose to play the game only with people you know in real life (if you prefer), but she has logged into Facebook, loaded the application and is playing it now. And she is kicking my butt!! This is exactly what all those high falutin techo theorists there would call the leveraging of an existing skillset for the virtual space. Ok, yes, or you could say that Scrabulous is Facebook's killer app. If my mother-in-law sees it as a reason to, at least in part, try this internet thing out, that is BIG.

So it's familiar, and it's pulling in a new set of online gamers that actually have lives. You mean there's more to life that Warcraft? But I digress... There are also some other cool things about Scrabulous. For one thing, its easier to cheat!

What do I mean? Well, have you ever played Scrabble with friends or relatives and there's always some mangy old Scrabble dictionary kicking around that people use to look up weird words like "em" "en" and "qat"? Maybe I am a purist, but I always thought that was cheating. Wasn't this a vocabulary tester? Shouldn't you at least come to the game with the words in your head?

Of course, just because it's cheating doesn't mean it's bad. And with Scrabulous online, you can easily look up all sorts of crazy words. I'll let you in on one resource, which you may have already discovered: Scrabble Word Finder. This site has a board that you can hammer your tiles into and it will calculate the best possible score. Now, keep in mind you opponent probably uses it too. Interestingly enough, this hasn't killed the game for me, because Scrabulous isn't just about points, it's about strategy -- you still have to maneuver things in such a way that your opponent doesn't get a triple!

Another side effect is you don't have to wait around for an hour while someone tries up to look a word in the dictionary that will get them lots of points, but that doesn't really exist. "Just a sec, just a sec," says the player, "I'm looking for a word that starts with 'x' and ends in 'q' - I've seen it before somewhere."

Having a computer in the mix also removes another pet peeve of mine: Scrabble house rules. A house rule is generally a change to the game to facilitate play, but often one person's house rule is another person's unreasonable tweak. For example, one house rule I never much liked was the "if you have three vowels you can just throw one back." My response is let the tiles fall where they may and play the ball where it lies. Of course, to this, many an opponent has said to me "it's only Scrabble." Scrabulous, by not allowing for house rules, is for me the great leveler.

So, congratulations Scrabulous for taking a game I liked but hadn't played in some time and turning it into a social networking dynamo.

Now, can you do something with Monopoly? Or should I say Monopulous?