Interesting article describing how Words with Friends cre­ators Zynga reshaped the [Scrabble] board, added four tiles, and changed the values and dis­tri­bution of the letters in the process of devel­oping their block­buster smart­phone game.

‘One of the goals we had in designing our letter dis­tri­bution was to give players letters that would allow them to form words much more easily than in other word games,’ [designer and engineer Kevin] Holme said via e-mail. ‘In [Words with Friends], we put four Hs into the bag and set their value to 3 — a big dif­ference from Scrabble, which uses two Hs worth 4 points.’

In other words, he amp­lified the number of… ‘explosive moments.’