The Passion of the Scrabulous

Earlier in the week I posted a blog entitled “What we can learn from Scrabulous.” The blog caught the attention of some Scrabulous fans who vented some of their anger at Hasbro for forcing the game off of the Facebook website.

For those who have not played Scrabulous or are unfamiliar with it, the degree of emotion may be startling. Believe me, these comments are just the tip of the iceberg of the amount of anger that Scrabulous fans feel towards Hasbro.

I think Hasbro is going to be just fine as product boycotts just don’t work and over time anger will cool and future generations will continue to buy and love the game. What is interesting to look at in all of this is the strong loyalty and emotion that games invoke in people.

A few years ago Stefan Fatsis wrote a book called Word Freak. It is a wonderful look at the world of competitive Scrabble. In it, you meet people who are so passionate about the game that they literally have no other lives. They actually memorize the dictionary. (I, however, never got beyond memorizing the two letter words but do suggest you play Xi and Xu whenever you get the chance – big, big points.)

Scrabble invokes that kind of passion and obviously so does its illegitimate child, Scrabulous. So what do we learn from all of this? I think it’s that games have an outsized impact on our culture. That those who design and invent games are creating engines for joy and passion. That these people do, as Mary Couzin of Discover Games emphatically puts it, belong on the cover of Rolling Stone.