Keep SCRAMBLE on facebook

We, the undersigned have been playing the Zynga game "Scramble" on Facebook for many years now. In fact, many of us have joined Facebook expressly to play Scramble. During our years on Scramble, most of us have formed and continue to form wonderful and warm friendships in the Scramble chat rooms to the point where it has become almost a support group for many of us. In many instances, these friendships are not just casual online encounters, but have developed into full-fledged real life relationships. Scramblers have met and married in these chat rooms, shared suffering and recovery from illnesses, discussed losses, floods and earthquakes. Strong relationships have formed and endure because of Scramble.

It was a sudden shock to hear Zynga will be shutting down Scramble on September 30th. Scramble has 200,000+ monthly players, and is extremely popular. Its users are very loyal and spend hours upon hours of their days playing this fast-paced, addictive game and chatting with fellow enthusiasts. Scramble truly represents social networking at its best.

The responses we have got from Zynga and Facebook have been puzzling and disappointing and refer to the recently launched "Words with Friends" and other "-ville" games. "Words with Friends" is very one-on-one and lacks the social component Scramble provides via chat rooms for a community of people. It is basically a clone of Scrabble which is of a completely different nature from our beloved Scramble (a version of Boggle) which is more about hand-eye-brain coordination, vocabulary and speed. While many Scramblers also participate in other Zynga games, all of those games lack the live social component and immediate rush of playing and winning (or losing) that Scramble provides with quick games, chat rooms and the ability for multiple people, even hundreds, to play at once against each other. Scramble is a gem, a classic of a game, particularly given the elements that Zynga put into it to make it so compelling.

It is heartbreaking to hear that Scramble will be gone September 30 and we strongly urge you not to shut it down and foster the growth of a truly social network.


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