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.’

Get Lamp is a documentary that looks back at the era of text-based computer games. If you were born before, say, 1980, you might remember these. Basically, to get through the game, you had to type things like Go east, Take hammer, Touch lady, etc.

In the words of the documentary makers:

They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory.

I remember playing a sort of ‘hardboiled crime’ text adventure on our old Amstrad CPC6128, and I surely must have played Zork at some point.

I later spent many hours playing Leisure Suit Larry, a more graph­ically advanced (and graphic!) incarn­ation of the adventure game, in which issuing instruc­tions such as Touch lady were not only acceptable but encouraged.

(via Galleycat)