January 29th, 2008Prolific: I Can Has Xbox Back?
A couple of weeks ago, Hasbro snatched the Boggle clone Bogglific from Facebook (and, by extension, from Marc) by presenting a DMCA notice. He quickly turned to Mass Effect for solace, and I lost prime quality time with the Xbox.
Bogglific’s developer, Roger Nesbitt, lamented that he had neither the time nor the money to fight Hasbro, and, so, closed up shop. Meanwhile, Scrabulous, a more popular game than Bogglific, faced the same fate, though the developers decided not to give in.
Fortunately for my gamerscore, we misunderstood the developer’s message. Yes, Bogglific was shut down, but a new app, Prolific, has taken its place.
Here’s what’s funny about our copyright system. If I understand this right, the only thing that may keep Prolific from suffering Bogglific’s fate is that Prolific has a slightly different scoring system and a special bonus square. Can the line between a successful innovation and a dirty, rotten criminal really be as fine as whether or not you highlight the letter “D” and give 5 points instead of 3?
