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What we can learn from Srabulous
August 12, 2008
Hasbro has managed the Scrabulous challenge about as well as can be expected. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, it is essentially a knock-off of Scrabble adapted for the Internet. It allows people to play the game (sometimes many, many games) with people all over the world while communicating with each other as they do so. Created by two brothers from India, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, it became by far the biggest revenue driver for Facebook. Hasbro took legal action and the brothers blinked (kind of) and replaced the game with a version that is not so obviously a copy of Scrabble. Scrabulous fans are not too happy with Hasbro right now but they'll get over it.
The advantage that the Agarwalla brothers had in adapting Scrabble was not so much that they understood the Internet intellectually but that they understood it intuitively. They and many others of their generation are creatures of the Internet and understand instinctively what their cohort wants, which appears to be a strong desire to connect with others through play (and possibly avoid working). In short, their design for Scrabulous came primarily from their gut and not their heads.
So, it seems to me that among the lessons learned from this experience is that smart toy manufacturers are going to have to employ people who don’t just intellecutally understand the Internet but who live in it and breathe its virtual air. In short, toy manufacturers need to find the “pirates” before the “pirates” find them. Once found, co-opt them by employing them.
If manufacturers do that then they have the makings of an organization that protects its own by giving this new game playing generation what they want, how they want it and when they want it . . . before someone else does.
Posted by Richard Gottlieb on August 12, 2008 | Comments (6)
