Day: 19 January 2008

Now you can have your own space conspiracy

I’m a little strange. But then I guess you know that by now.
I believe that man did land on the moon for the first time in 1969; I believe that the images I saw of Apollo 11 on that July day were real, the images I saw as a 11-year old in a very crowded USIS in Calcutta (the name and the location may have changed by now, but I think it used to be on Chowringhee then). I believe that there were children like me all over the world, busy trying to memorise the names of the astronauts, the Command Modules and the Lunar Excursion Modules, for every Apollo mission since then, and a few before. I believe the pictures from Apollo 8 were real as well, and I believe I was really excited to see pictures of earth from the dark side of the moon. I believe that Apollo 13 did have a problem, and I believe I was really tense listening to the radio and wondering if they’d make it back safely.

So I don’t understand the conspiracy theorists who believe it was all made up.

And if you’re one of them, don’t despair. In years to come, you should be able to make up your own outer space conspiracy, and join up with like-minded people to act out your fantasy, thanks to NASA. They’ve issued an RFI for the “development of a NASA-based massively multiplayer online learning game“.

Incidentally, for those of you who wonder about the “waste” of space exploration. What I know is this: I cannot remember any other “scientific” event in 50 years that had children all over the world wondering, dreaming, listening, learning, yearning. What I know is this: when Neil Armstrong said “That’s one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind” (you can listen here) I wasn’t thinking, the US made it to the moon; my first thought was, Man had made it. Mankind had made it. What I know is this: even today, I hold what was done by NASA with awe and reverence.

Butt me no Butts: A sideways look at the Because Effect

No, I haven’t forgotten how to spell. This is not a post about cigarettes or even about archery. Or any of those butts.

It’s about Scrabble, the game invented by Alf Butts around 70 years ago. The game at the heart of the dispute between Hasbro, Mattel (or more correctly, its subsidiary JW Spear) and a couple of youngsters in Calcutta.

I love Scrabble. There were times, in the early 1980s, I used to play 20 games a night, all with a close friend, Viraf Mehta. Somehow he found the time to become UK national champion at the game, something he richly deserved.

What the Scrabulous guys have done is to give the game a much-needed fillip, a real boost. If I was at Hasbro or Mattel, I’d take a close look at sales of the game in the last six months or so, and compare it with sales in prior periods, prior years, prior decades. I’d take an even closer look at the sales figures in locations where Facebook take-up is high.

And I would wonder. I’d wonder whether there was a connection. And I’d be very careful about what I did. Just in case I was making an omelette out of geese and golden eggs.

You see, I think the Scrabulous guys have done a bit more than given the game a boost. They’ve given sales of the game a boost. For free.

The guys at Hasbro and at Mattel should be trying to figure out where the scarcity lies, in the physical board game or in the digital version. They should be trying to figure out whether they can make money because of Scrabulous, not with Scrabulous. It really doesn’t matter what sort of deal they’ve done with EA, they’re not going to wean off the current Scrabulous players that easily. But they can alienate them. And they’re close to doing so right now.