Scrabble first demonstrated that it does not need the actual click tiles against an edge when it became popular on the computer about two decades ago. Now, the game has migrated to Smartphones, both through the game with trademarks and a similar game called words with friends.
In fact, words with friends, owned by Zynga, has stolen some Thunder Scrabble with his word formation game digital only. Ten million people have downloaded the iPhone app so far, Zynga says, and went live on Android systems this month.
Solitaire Scrabble is an option on computers and mobile phones, but many players prefer a human opponent. Scrabble mobile words with friends both allow social interaction through turns and a chat feature. "It feels like I am referring to my friends through the games I'm playing with them," said Paul Bettner, who developed the words with friends in 2009, together with his brother David.
On the phone, games can take days or even weeks to play, so that people often have different games going at once. (Can you cheat? The answer is Yes).
To add more drama to a game that is subject to breaks, the Bettners has increased scores on some letters — a c is four points instead of three, for example, and a j instead of 8-10.
They have also pushed the double and triple-number of squares closer together so that the big word scores were more likely. "What ends up happening is that you have these moments that are more explosive," said Paul Bettner. Incidentally, making the point values and board layout different from those of Scrabble avoids potential legal problems with Hasbro, which owns the American and Canadian rights to the game (Mattel owns the rest).
The first time, Stefan Fatsis, a competitive Scrabble player, searched words with friends, he said, he ended with a score of 626. His highest score after thousands of games of Scrabble was 603.
Mr. Fatsis, author of "Word Freak," the culture of Scrabble, said that the game Scrabble mobile via Facebook was clunkier and more "commercial" words with friends. While Hasbro digital strategy is improving, it has mostly played catch-up in the digital realm, he said, they take longer than expected to introduce new technologies and to iron out bugs in its games.
Consequently, more agile and more entrepreneurs have been able to come up with popular alternative, he said.
Mark Blecher, senior vice president for digital media and gaming for Hasbro, has denied that the company had been slow to embrace digital technology. "Hasbro innovates but we innovate when we know there is a real market," he said. Words with friends, he added, is not a substitute for Scrabble; missing the real rules and the real reason for the game.
Hasbro does not disclose the data to mobile users of Scrabble, who can access the game in several ways on their phones: through Facebook, through an iPhone app (Android soon) and through the site Pogo.com. Its digital games are developed by Electronic Arts.
Megan Lawless, 31, of Chicago, play Scrabble and words with friends on your mobile and said that he liked both as a way to connect with people near you. He learned to play Scrabble by his great-grandmother, who belonged to a League of Scrabble.
A day in 2009, no one knew was available to play with you, so hit the option on words with friends that allows you to play with a random opponent.
"It was quite out of character for me to do," he said. But the game went well, you could say that you and your opponent were evenly matched in terms of skills. His opponent has proposed a revenge and repeated games led to chat about their personal lives. Eventually, he discovered that his opponent was a man, Jasper Jasperse, and that he was a firefighter who has lived in Holland.
After they began e-mailing each other and talk on Skype, Mr. Jasperse asked if he could visit her in Chicago, "and we clicked immediately," said ms. Lawless. Now, they plan to marry in July, and he will move to Chicago.
The random function didn't work as well for Alex Alan, 31, of Brooklyn. For a while, "I was playing these anonymous people, seven or eight going on at once, and was getting out of hand," he said. He was playing words with friends, said, when he could have been talking to his girlfriend. So now he restricts its games to a small group of people I know in real life.
In an attempt to disconnect, Mr. Alan also tries to play with his friends to Scrabble about a backgammon, the kind that would be immediately recognized by Alfred Mosher Butts in New York, who invented Scrabble in the 1930s.
In fact, digital Scrabble's popularity has increased the sales of board game, Mr. Blecher said Hasbro. The company has sold four million branded Scrabble Games of physical variety in 2010, an increase of over 100% in a period of five years.
As Mr. Fatsis said: "the truth is, there's something really exciting about managing tiles and put them on a Board and having your opponent sitting across the table from you."
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