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Games Magazine Best Party Game of the year 2007/2008

GiftTRAP wins GAMES Magazine’s “Best Party Game of the year 2007/2008”

What's the idea?

Click here to find out how we’ve turned gift giving into a hilarious social experience

Discover the fun!

Click to unwrap the fun.

Puts your gifts to the test!

GiftTRAP is the hilarious new game that’s taking the gaming world by storm and putting the social back into board games.

The goal is to really get to know your friends and family.

You win by knowing your friends and choosing the right gifts, but most of all it’s just fun to play and gets you talking about things that matter.

• 3-8 Players, 5+
• Playtime 45-75 mins
• Learn in 10 mins

• 1 full size game board
• 640 Gift Ideas
• Rules
• 8 Organza Gift Bags containing; scoring markers, gift & choice tokens plus advanced strategy cards

Love to play Trivial Pursuit, Cranium or Apples to Apples - You will love this family party game.

GiftTRAP is all the fun of Secret Santa without needing to shop or wrap.

Syndicate

What kind of Gift Giver are you?

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There I said it. That feels better.

GiftTRAP is The Bucket List as a board game.

I’m so excited to have finally watched this movie, but it’s funny its taken a few days for it to really sink in.

As I watched it and the plot unfolded I got drawn into the characters the movie flew by. I really enjoyed it. It was only afterwards that I tried to check of the list of items on their list and cross check them to GiftTRAP. Well they are pretty much all there. We’ve got The Great Wall of China (but not on a bike - not any easy photo to find), but we do have Cross the USA on your Dream Bike. It’s not that this is significant it’s just that thinking about things to do before you die is a new way to look at the game and it’s purpose.

We’d gone down the “Gift” path simply as the game was inspired by the question “How does Santa Pick gifts for Children”. Quickly the gifts expanded to include charitable acts, gifts of time and aspirational items, even fantasy skills and experiences.

Many people’s instant reaction to GiftTRAP had been “Oh how materialistic”, which is just so sad and completely wrong. Those who have looked closer confirm this is not true. We even have a quote about this on the box. In this world you always struggle to go against people’s first impressions. So I’m delighted to have a hit movie like the bucket list bring this type of “What shall I do with my Life” into the public discussion.

As I read some of the blog posts about the movie. It was a surprise box office hit and a bunch of the reviews where mediocre. I’d have to say I don’t agree.

I’d estimated something like 20 million people have seen the movie already and in the few test conversations I’ve had this association can only be a positive thing for GiftTRAP,

I thought Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman were amazing together. The main criticism seemed to be that the movie glorified Cancer. There were multiple sarcastic comments about being lucky enough to find yourself sharing a room with a billionaire. Did it glorify Cancer?

To me that just want not the point of the movie it became clear to me - “Bucket Lists aren’t for the nearly dead”

Life is prescious. Time ticks by. We all die one day. It’s good for the soul to set yourself goals. Put a timeline to it. Check things off early and don’t leave it to a last minue rush where you need to meet a billionaire in the next bed.

Go build your bucket list today. Then share it and compare it with your friends an their lists.

I’m having a bunch of thoughts and ideas about this. What to do? How, when who?

• I know I normally hate licensed games, but Warner Brothers - perhaps GiftTRAP is your Bucket List game. It’ more likely some suckey game will come out and that would be fun and make it easy to make the connection.
• Which movie reviewers would review GiftTRAP and discuss the connection?
• Can I get cross selling both in-store and online. The Bucket List is a top selling DVD right now.
• Join in the discussion about the movie
• Create a Bucket List Poll
• Are we missing any bucket list style items from the game? (there’s an expansion pack theme)
• How about a Bucket List Party? - What would that look like
• In a world with too many press releases what kind of release can we make that will get noticed

I’m sure this won’t the the last post in this subject.

I do wonder about the negative connotations of “death”. Is the movie good for kids? It may be a PG 13 movie, but it’s almost not the watching that’s important. It’s good to go through the exercise thinking.

For me these are all positive. For me it’s not about death and it’s about teaching your kids to learn to dream and to live every day as your last (it’s about doing it yourself, but then it’s not what I think that matters here - it’s what’s the mass “popular” reaction to the association.

I’ve picked up on this theme a couple of times when surfing the net. It’s begun to niggle in my mind. In fact i posted a suggestion on a website that in my humble opinion should have had a “Games” section to match their “Books” and “Movies” sections.

It was at MindfulMom.com where I posted a comment and a minor rant. Funny but a day later as I went back to find my comment to link to it I notice I was listened to! Way to go. The power of free speech. Susan Kaiser-Greenland responded to my comment and has agreed to add a “Games“ section. I hope this is the beginning of a movement

A few things have made me think that whilst it’s perhaps not perceived to be the case that there is a strong argument that board games (in fact I’m talking about “games” regardless of medium) should fight for an equal standing in the world along with other commonly understood pillars of the “Arts & Culture Club”

• Authors/Books
• Music/Bands
• Plays/Theatre
• Actors/Producers/Movies/Videos

What causes me to comment on this is that as I cruise sites on the web like Entertainment Weekly or LA Times I notice they have review sections for all of the above categories but nothing for Games.

I pick on these sites randomly. There’s no doubt an exhaustive list of sites which consistently fail to recognise the social significance of gaming.

According to Wikipedia Art is defined as;

“Art refers to a diverse range of human activities, creations, and expressions that are appealing or attractive to the senses or have some significance to the mind of an individual.”

and Culture is defined as;

“Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called ‘the way of life for an entire society.’ As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.”

In my mind games fit into both definitions, perhaps not all games, but them I’m sure not all books/movies/plays qualify too. Every sector has it’s own diverse offerings.

I’ve got some theories why this is the case, but it’s an issue that’s been bugging me and I thought I’d air it and work on beginning to develop a strategy to try to take “Gaming” back having a level footing with all these other forms of Arts & Culture

My first observation is that the games industry has done little to promote itself and position itself to have a rightful place in the minds of the consumer alongside books, movies, music etc. Now the unnatural dominance of the sector by giants Hasbro and Mattel does not help this cause. Monopoly, Scrabble, Candyland are all deeply embedded in our culture, but I’m not sure they are “art”. They vary in great degrees to which they might be considered “Art” - Scrabble I’d vote as art for sure

Many mass-produced games are designed to meet the demands of a throwaway audience, a trend that does little for developing the category. Buyers at the likes of Walmart and Toys ‘R Us are looking for highly advertised of highly branded games. Their focus is on sales and the exploitation of fads for the latest TV show or movie and not for the development of the category and the popularization of board games.

There is an emerging sector of games called “Designer” games (so named because the name of the designer is on the box). This trend began in Germany where games are a much deeper part of the social fabric than there are in North America. There are also design differences in the way the game plays and how it’s made and how it’s usually closely and meaningfully themed. These games are all about fun choices, about keeping all players involved to the end of the game and they are all about high re-playability.

Today there are a number of “Designer” games that are crossing into mainstream culture (and even stores like Walmart and Toys ‘R Us) They are typically games that have sold in excess of a million copies. Great examples of such games are Carcasonne by Klaus J켼rgen Wrede published by Rio Grande and Settlers of Catan by Klaus Teuber published by Mayfair Games.

Notice the parallel to books where a title has both an author and a publisher. Both these games won the highly coveted “Spiel Des Yahre” Award and many other awards besides.

Interestingly Barnes and Noble is probably the leader in taking these “Designer” games to the market place. They have a game section featuring many “Designer” games alongside some of the familiar classics and sales growth is strong. They have been rewarded for supporting this category. There’s also a whole series of independent board game stores out there who need your support, these stores, usually run by enthusiasts know the games they sell, they know how to play them and how to help match you to the right game. Many have demo copies and can show you what’s in a specific game.

For me a great game store, just like a great book store places staff reviews on their favorite games.

There’s something like 1,000 new games launched each year - not quite as many as books, but its still significant. There are something like 30,000 games logged on boardgamegeek.com.

I’m certainly not trying to answer all the issues right here and now.  i’m simply seeking to put a stake in the ground and to think a little more about these issues and then try to catalog a more complete response over time.

I’m also curious if I can seek to drum up support to make sure I’m not the only person in the industry who’s banging this drum.

Scrabulous finally dropped from Facebook Apps directory

Within 48 hours of the launch of Wordscaper the Scabulous app has finally been removed from the Application Directory

It now says the following if you try to go directly to the Scrabulous page.

“Application “Scrabulous” has been restricted

We’re sorry but you’re unable to access this application due to restrictions put in place by either the developer of the application or by Facebook. Please visit the Application Directory for other applications.”

I’m assuming this is global.

So the current Hasbro vs Wordscaper score is 67k vs 85k

That’s not bad in 48 hours, but Hasbro is still climbing too.

I’d expected that Wordscraper might do better. And now they are on their own if searching for “Scrabble” doesnt get you to find “Wordscaper”

My sense is when the dust settles we’ll see that the Agarwalla brothers do a better job of continuing to innovate and to listen to their users.

Will Wordscraper pass Hasbro by tomorrow?

I must confess to feeling sorry for Hasbro on occasions for their stupidity. Now if someone told me Scrabulous (Wordscraper) was a “plant” funded for Hasbro I’d be impressed - all generated by an idea from some off the wall “social media” agency - then I’d laugh out loud..

Not only have they benefited from increased sales of Scrabble - it’s practically been relaunched, they also sell a million plus copies per year so their brand isn’t doing too bad and instead of applauding the innovation they stamp all over it.

I’m commenting as an indie board game publisher of the award winning party game GiftTRAP, which is built on the back of Creative Commons licenses, so I’m a huge supporter of this “mix it up” school. The CC guys have have really supportive of our game and we couldn’t have made our game a success without it. Yet success is all about attention and you’d think Hasbro would get that.

To me it’s a crime to “kill” the attention Scrabulous has given them. Was Hasbro really thinking people wanted to switch to a legal version of their game. I laughed when I read a defensive quote from Hasbro saying they “will continue to innovate on Scrabble” - (oh I forgot about the Onyx version)

I’ve published a Facebook app of my game and so I know how hard it is. Launching a virtual gift-exchange game a year after Free Gifts and Facebook Gifts have delivered 150 million virtual gifts is huge. Social media sites like Flickr, LinkedIn, Boardgamegeek and Facebook have been our saviour in getting our game to market. To get attention it’s all about timing and story.

People don’t just use the apps because they are there. The edgyness and illegality of the Scrabulous game was half the attraction. Facebook has dampened the impact of apps and users have lost their curiosity. I’m not surprised with 30k apps on offer.

I’d trade in our “Best Party Game” award for a share of their attention but it doesnt happen that way.

What I dislike most about the big game companies is they don’t really have to try. It’s not about the games anymore (we don’t need more new copies of the same old stuff), it’s about the control of the channels to market. Consumers just keep buying monopoly spinoffs, Onyx scrabble sets and the list goes on. How many times can people buy the same games. http://boardgamegeek.com is a great place to look for truly great games and read what real people think.

Just please don’t buy any licensed/branded games - “Some sad Shrek Game” or “Desperate Housewives Trivia.”.  Just like buying a good book make sure if you buy a game that is has awards and great reviews form trusted sources. These “cookie cutter” games have no innovation and you’ll pretty much play them once and forget them if you are lucky.

The problem or the miracle of something like Scrabble/Monopoly etc is that it’s become a self repeating part of culture. It’s almost genetic.

So go on break the mold and go buy an indie game. Even better buy one in the summer and really buck the trend!

Firstly I’ve got to say I like the name Wordscraper”

Speaking as an indie board game inventor/publisher I like it. I know from experience that naming your game is far from easy.

And obviously they needed to avoid any resemblance to “Scrabble”

And the speed of development was fast

Well actually not quite so fast.

According to an update that’s visible on Facebook it seems it was fully functional by April 6, 2008

So now I give even more Kudos to the whole affair and to the Agarwalla brothers for having the skill to time their moves.

It’s becoming a well-managed media show and some great strategic execution. I’m wondering what else do they have up their sleeve!

First the wave of coverage all about the lawsuit

Next the wave all about the shutdown

And now a third wave all about the rebirth of Scrabulous as Wordscraper

So all along we thought that perhaps Hasbro has timed their lawsuit to coincide with release of EA’s buggy hacker friendly version of Scrabble

So now we have two not so nimble not so popular not so scalable Scrabble apps from Hasbro and Mattel

And we get a cool new app from Scrabulous that has probably been ready all this time.

Full kudos to them for playing the game. Hasbro and Mattel must be wondering what next.

Maximizing and controlling the release of information and planning their responses is a very smart thing to do.

And in starting with a new app from scratch they achieve two things;

1/ They prove the Hasbro et all that it’s not about being called something like Scrabble
2/ They show they the working effectively with social media is all about speed and timing

Im second guessing lots of stuff here, but the update is there for all to see.

So the big question is how fast will people jump to use Wordscaper?

Well get a good clue tomorrow, but the information broke a bit late to have much impact on tomorrow user numbers.

How much will it grow from around 200 daily active users.

How fast can they get past Hasbro’s Scrabble game that I think had reached 50k users.

Well have to wait and see.

Will Scrabulous users now be encouraged to migrate?

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