— The title of my newest screenplay. Will be working on it in the free time between production of “January.”
I love Scrabble. Love it. Love words, love being competitive, am working on memorizing all 101 two letter words. I have an iPhone, and have a game called Words With Friends on it, which I’m sure many of you have, if not played, at least heard of.
I’ve had Words With Friends since I first got my iPhone, about a year and a half, and, at first, things were great. Awesome, even. I could play a game very similar to Scrabble with anyone (with a Smartphone) at any time? Beyond cool. Until I realized something. Something that would slowly grow into a near-hatred of the game. The sad truth is: Words With Friends is not Scrabble.
At first, it was just the different point values of the letters, or the configuration of premium squares, but slowly, surely, I began to discover differences between the dictionary of Words With Friends, and the Official Scrabble Players’ Dictionary 4th Edition. “Fag” was no longer an acceptable word to play, despite the fact that it has other, non-offensive connotations, among many other words which would be legal in a game of Scrabble. Because Words With Friends allowed you to try as many words as possible, without the penalization of a false word being challenged by an opponent, my opponents were able to try all sorts of strange looking conglomerations of their letters until something worked, something that would get them twenty or thirty points, and that they had no idea what it meant. In addition to this, the wide array of websites enabling users to bypass creating their own words made it so that when my opponents played words that seemed amiss, I had more reason to believe that something was, in fact, amiss.
And then the worst thing yet came. Zynga, the makers of Words With Friends, released “Token Packages,” where players could pay real money for virtual currency to spend on “enhancements” to Words With Friends. These enhancements, if purchased, makes it so that players can gain an unfair advantage over their opponents, in essence cheating. Yes, you can pay money to make up for your lack in skill.
One of these features is the Tile Pile, which enables you to know the composition of tiles left in the bag, and, judging by what tiles are on the board, the tiles in your opponent’s hand. Far more offensive to this is the Word-O-Meter, which promises to “improve your vocabulary,” by telling you how strong your word is, compared to the rest of your tiles and the words they could make. So now, not only can you figure out what’s in your opponents tile rack, but also if there’s a better word you can be making. You can now pay money to be better than your opponent. All it takes is a few bucks—23 tokens is USD 2.99, and 40 tokens will cost you USD 4.99—and you can be on the road to winning. Tonight, I played a game of Scrabble, and it was so much fun. Something that Words With Friends’ long-form way of playing and myriad problems is starting to no longer accomplish. If cheaters never prosper, then it must be because they’re losing money paying for features to “improve” their game; clearly, Zynga is fine with cheaters succeeding.
LOVE,
BRENT
