EA's New Scrabble App Causes Kerfuffle

[BlazeRaider]

Just don't tell me that your score on the leaderboards is linked intrinsically to your quality of life or that you are unable to enjoy a game unless there is a giant number that can be placed in a tag in your sig so that everyone can see. It's terribly depressing and really narcissistic.

I'm saying a healthy human mind does not form emotional connections with user stats.

I strongly disagree, it's perfectly reasonable for people who play games to get attached to their game stats. People take pride in their accomplishments, and symbols or reminders of things they've done act as nice manifestations of those accomplishments, think of the importance placed on trophies, medals, diplomas and certificates, pictures, even scars. These scrabble players got their stats through a lot of playing, it meant a lot, maybe not to you but it did to them, and it cannot be replaced easily.

I find your inability to understand people can become emotionally invested in representations of their accomplishments very depressing and really narcissistic, because viewing items or words solely at face value, purely based on what they literally mean with no emotions whatsoever seems like a cold way to look at things, and because it sounds like you think something cannot possibly have value unless you, personally, feel it does.

So yeah, getting your stats reset sucks.

I think we have an extreme disagreement regarding the meaning of the word "accomplishment".

Well feel free to state your beliefs on what an accomplishment is then.

I view an accomplishment as something that has been successfully achieved. They can be large or small, they can be productive or recreational, have lots of meaning or little meaning. In general though, people take pride in accomplishments that take a lot of time, effort, or skill. Running a marathon is an accomplishment people would take pride in, as would successfully raising a family, or writing a book, since these things take quite a bit of time and/or effort. A game stat that takes several years to create would fall into that category, it is not something people can choose to do at a whim.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

EA takes over, disrespects everyone, ruins everything.

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking that they do this on purpose.

No one can be this stupid.

 

[BlazeRaider]

Playing video games does not require anywhere as much investment or bring any return as those things you mentioned. There are competitions out there where people actually earn money playing games and work hard to get there, but that is completely different than grinding stats. What you are doing is essentially killing time. It is not on the level where it benefits you in any way. No one is going to praise you for spending nine years playing WoW. You will attract nothing but pity and contempt.

The spirit of an accomplishment is having bettered yourself and/or others around you in some way. Anything below that indicates severely degenerated standards.

An accomplishment requires heavy investment? It requires benefit?

Whether or not something is an accomplishment is not dependent on how hard it was or what it accomplished. It is also not dependent on whether you get paid for it or if other people praise you. All that matters is that a goal was achieved, then it qualifies as an accomplishment. If it's an accomplishment then people are entitled to have a certain amount of pride in it (how much pride is not for you to decide by the way, it's up to the individual), and they might even become emotionally attached to reminders of that accomplishment like medals, trophies, or written statistics. If these reminders were to be erased it would be perfectly reasonable to be upset at having them gone.

As an example: I have 7 million neopoints. That's a point of pride for me, not much, but still some. I generally rank that accomplishment up there with this one time I hit a bee mid-flight with a pencil, with a single try. I don't spend it, I just hoard it and collect interest everyday, the 7 mil does nothing for me, it's just a number I look at as I habitually collect my interest each day, but I'd be pissed if it was erased.

You see, you don't get to decide what other people consider an accomplishment. You don't get to decide what is considered sufficient investment in an endeavour, you don't get to decide if it resulted in what you consider having bettered something, the people who did the thing and those effected decide. If someone considers having played WoW for 9 years an accomplishment then to him it is. To others it may not be but to him it is, you can give him as much pity or contempt as you wish (although that would be strange since his pride doesn't really effect you in any way so if your a normal person you'll just feel apathy), but pride in accomplishments can be highly subjective. I'm sure there are things you're proud of, things that make you feel happy just remembering, that other people would consider worthless or worse. But they'd be wrong, because if you're proud of it, that's all that should matter to you.

I'm sorry you seem to think a sense of accomplishment should be reserved for great deeds, things you get paid for, or things that have gone through some sort of consensus that "grants" you the "privilege" of feeling happy, but it's not. People can grow attached to the simplest things, that's not wrong, and these scrabble players had their stats, which represented their own little achievements erased for little reason. And that sucks.

 

[Disillusioned]

My mother plays Facebook Scrabble. This is NOT good. I'm going to have one hell of an angry woman to calm down the next time she gets on the desktop.

Also, seriously, what is this BS about dropping the manual matchmaking feature? Why on earth WOULDN'T you have that? It's an important functionality, how the hell do you control who you play with otherwise?

Since EA's hopeless redesign of facebook Scrabble thousands of users have posted on the Mattel, Scrabble and EA FaceBook pages, only to find themselves blocked without cause. Similarly 1000's have signed petitions and have joined one or more of the groups opposing the changes to Scrabble. EA and Mattel continue to ignore the pleas from Scrabblers to consider returning the much better, faster and more sociable Gamehouse version, Scrabble Worldwide (exc US and Canada) for PC users and to leave the inferior EA version for mobile devices and Apple users.

Please can you help?

As masters of Escaping, I'm sure you'd have some brillant ideas to assist the plight of Facebook Scrabblers, cos' as Eppy (Bored) said... there are many angry women and men, far from calm out there!