Navigating through the phalanx of executives was, of course, the most difficult part of the job. Nearly a dozen times, I had to journey up to Hasbro Games headquarters in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and tell the SCRABBLE story to a new corporate team or key executive who’d transferred from another part of the company—or who’d never been in the game industry until a few weeks beforehand. My task included explaining the evolution of the game and its marketing strategies, the tournament scene as a marketing and public relations tool, opportunities their predecessors had missed, potential pitfalls, and more.
I learned my ultimate approach to all this from an old friend and colleague, Fred Seibert, one of the smartest people I know. Among other things, Fred, along with partner Alan Goodman, was on the founding staff for MTV and an architect of both Nickelodeon and Spike TV. Fred went on to become president of Hanna-Barbera, president of MTV Online, an Emmy Award–winning producer, and all kinds of other stuff. Fred is always around the action. As I write this, he was just acknowledged in the Los Angeles Times as the primary guru to the young man who launched the Internet sensation Tumblr.
One day at lunch, Fred told me this: “I was free when I totally accepted that some people in business are going to see me as a genius and others were going to think I’m a complete jerk.” The key, of course, is to keep the latter group to a minimum—and to be aware of who is in which camp.
The second part is tricky. For understandable reasons, people don’t often show their hand in business dealings. Hey, we’re humans. That means, depending on the scenario, we’re going to be defensive, territorial, paranoid, ambitious, confident, vindictive, or any of a host of other mindsets. Being an experienced game player—whether it’s SCRABBLE or poker—can be helpful in the business world. We learn to size up situations and other participants quickly. We learn to recognize “tells” from people across the table. We understand when to be aggressive and when to lay back. We think strategically.
In working with SCRABBLE executives over the years, I bore this in mind. I also employed several other approaches in my M.O. First, I tried to get to know everyone—and understand them—as well as I could, both as people and as business partners. I worked hard to cultivate relationships at all levels—assistants, middle management, senior management. I worked hard for inclusion, always leaving a paper trail whenever I could to both cover my ass and get everyone involved.
I tried never to go over anyone’s head unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then, I’d try to make sure the aggrieved party knew it was happening. No one was ever sucker-punched. Still, I know I pissed off some people along the way. But I don’t regret it. My motivation was never to flex my influence or steamroll my agenda. Instead, I clung to my mantra. At the end of the day, my decisions and actions were never about what was best for me, the game’s manufacturers, or the thousands of hardcore enthusiasts. It was “Always what’s best for SCRABBLE, the game.”
When Stefan and I discussed my future and that of the NSA, I said that neither I nor the NSA members should ever take anything for granted. The routine changing of the corporate guard, the economy, and budgets made us all vulnerable to both whimsy and legitimate new marketing philosophies. It’s well understood in the business world that when a new senior executive arrives, there’s a coattail loaded with his or her people waiting for their chance. This can be former ad and PR agencies, former right-hand men and women, and relatives.
So I knew well that it might happen—no, would happen—at some point. It would be when the people who “got” me and my approach were outnumbered by those who did not.
After two decades, the process of serious change began around 2007. At the time, the Hasbro marketing team we worked with in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, was a thoughtful group who understood games and game culture. In a series of meetings, we all agreed that it was time to reprioritize the NSA’s efforts. The consensus was that the NSA’s time and talents would be better spent identifying and recruiting new players and game purchasers and less time on the day-to-day administration of the SCRABBLE tournament scene.
To achieve these new priorities, the NSA would first turn over many of our responsibilities to the players themselves. This would include, but not be limited to, the sanctioning and organization of both local tournaments and the National SCRABBLE Championship, the management of three hundred or so official SCRABBLE Clubs in North America, all rules activities, development of word lists and materials, and revisions of the Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary. The new group would also be responsible for maintaining a list of tournament ratings for up to 10,000 past and present tournament players and for selecting the team to represent the United States and Canada at the World SCRABBLE Championships. All these had been responsibilities of the NSA for decades. But not for much longer.
I both accepted and understood Hasbro’s thinking on this. It was hard to argue with the logic when viewed through the lens of a contemplative, experienced business executive. Which is not to say it wasn’t personally disappointing. Remember, part of me was a passionate player as well, with a perhaps unrealistic perspective of the game as sacred, not to be messed with by bottom-line-driven game marketers who “didn’t understand” its magic and power.
When asked the best way to go about this transition, we proposed the following to Hasbro.
■ That we organize a two-day SCRABBLE summit at Hasbro Games headquarters in East Longmeadow.
■ The NSA would compile a list of fifteen NSA players to form a Steering Committee for the transition of selected responsibilities and invite them to the summit. The group would be diverse. It would include players, activists, and organizers from all over North America. Some would be top SCRABBLE experts. Others would be successful businesspeople. Still others would be average tournament players. There would be attorneys, computer experts, parents with children in the School SCRABBLE Program, and more.
■ At the summit, the NSA staff, Hasbro Games executives, and the fifteen players would address the change and work out the next steps.
Part of me felt like a guy who was planning his own funeral. One of my survival skills has always been seeing change—or trouble—a mile away. This dynamic was honed at home, where both my parents were alcoholics. I could tell by the way the car door slammed when my father got home from work what the next several hours were going to be like. It was also developed at an all-boys Catholic school, where I basically tried to stay under the radar of the embittered monks who taught us and the tough kids freshly arrived to the suburbs from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. I realize this sounds very Dickensian, but that was what it felt like to me.
We began with an invitation to selected players. It was purposely vague, saying only that Hasbro wanted their input for a discussion on the future of organized SCRABBLE. They were thrilled. We explained that there would be some social aspects with numerous meals, a tour of the factory where they could actually see SCRABBLE being made right before their eyes, a gift package, and the like. And, of course, Hasbro paid all travel and hotel expenses.
So we convened, about twenty people altogether. The NSA was represented by Jane Ratsey Williams, Joe Edley, Katie Schulz Hukill, Patricia Hocker, and me. Our other key staff member, Theresa Bubb, held down the fort at NSA headquarters.
We started things off with a great cocktail party and dinner and kept things light. Hasbro execs mingled amiably with the players. We NSA staffers enjoyed ourselves as well, but the evening was compromised because of the hidden agenda we harbored.
Our meeting began the next day with introductions and some generalized overviews. Hasbro and I took turns explaining the upcoming changes and, to a lesser degree, the rationale behind it all. The group listened patiently. No one was particularly demonstrative in his or her reactions. Later, I surmised it was for a couple of reasons. For openers, there was plenty of vagueness about the transition. However, I believe that one fact stood out from the rest of the presentation and was the focus of the players: after thirty
years, they were finally going to have their own, solely player-run SCRABBLE association.
This was a huge deal for them, and I knew it. This had been a dream for many of them for decades. And, despite the advances of player involvement in running the association under my tenure, there was always the perception—and I suppose the reality, too—that their fate was always in the hands of the Hasbro-supported NSA and the corporation itself.
This collective sentiment was made extremely clear as we opened the floor for discussion. I began with a proposal that we consider restructuring the NSA into two divisions. The first would be the Club and Tournament Division; this would be run completely by the players, with its own agenda and officers. The second would be the School SCRABBLE and Outreach Division. This would be run by the existing NSA staff. The two divisions would operate under the NSA umbrella.
It seemed like a reasonable and practical first step from my point of view. It would make the transition smoother; the new players group could benefit from our experience and relationship with Hasbro, and over time they could evolve to complete autonomy.
When I finished presenting this proposal, I looked first at the Hasbro execs, a few of whom were nodding in, if not agreement, consideration. I then turned to the players.
“Any comments on this?” I asked as I scanned the table.
I was greeted by blank faces and total silence. In retrospect, it reminds me of the vaudeville comedian peering out at a mute, unresponsive crowd and asking, “Is this an audience or an oil painting?”
A few more seconds passed. Then we moved on. To me, it had just been completely confirmed by the players that they wanted to do it on their own. Even now, five years later, I’m sure my motivation was mixed at best. Undoubtedly, part of me was making a last-minute attempt to keep my organization intact after more than twenty-five years. Hey, I’m only human. Another part of me sincerely felt an interim step would be good for all involved. Having been the person squarely in the middle between Hasbro and the players for so long, I knew there was going to be a lot of nuance, unanswered questions, unexplored mutual territory, and financial considerations. Some navigational experience could help. But it was not meant to be.
The rest of the meeting was a blend of questions and observations, both the theoretical and the practical. It was agreed that the players would take over all aspects of SCRABBLE clubs and tournaments. This would be itemized and signed off on in the coming months. The NSA would devote itself to getting as many new people playing as much SCRABBLE as often as possible. Oh yeah—and buying more games. Ultimately, it was agreed that the new players’ organization—soon officially named the North American SCRABBLE Players Association—would take over all club and tournament activities on July 1, 2009.
As early as that evening, I’d processed and accepted the new structure. I had to admit that there were plenty of upsides to the change as well. For one thing, I’d no longer have to deal with some of the peskier, tedious, and unsettling aspects of the job.
The complaints from NSA members were at the top of the list. Believe me, I understood where they came from: a passion for the game and a naïveté about the business end of the NSA—not the least of which were legal, practical, and financial constraints under which we operated. The NSA also received thousands of letters, e-mails, and phone calls over the years, which would soon no longer be our responsibility. Perennial favorites included lost game pieces, new ideas for improving SCRABBLE, looking to license the SCRABBLE name, complaints about words, complaints about rude behavior on illegal Internet SCRABBLE sites, looking for donations, looking for NSA endorsements, needing information and/or permission to publish a SCRABBLE book, incarcerated people wanting to connect, foreign SCRABBLE associations seeking materials . . . the list goes on.
I cannot let this topic pass without sharing a bit about the number of people in prisons who passionately play SCRABBLE. For years, not a week passed when the NSA did not receive letters from the incarcerated asking for merchandise, rulings on a play or word, or the feasibility of starting a SCRABBLE club at the writer’s penal institution.
I had, in fact, once been challenged to visit a prison to play its champion in a match. I thought it would be a cool experience, but Hasbro felt otherwise. They must have felt that in its own way, it would have been as least as dangerous for me as appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The NSA once received a remarkable letter from an inmate recounting a fierce SCRABBLE game against another inmate. It detailed an argument that had ensued over the admissibility of a certain word in SCRABBLE. Things became so heated that the sender of the letter ended up stabbing his opponent in the eye with the pencil they’d been using to keep score.
The inmate even included a photocopy of the warden’s official report for proof, which also revealed the prisoner had spent fifteen days in solitary confinement for the attack. The prisoner concluded the letter to us by insisting that if he’d had an Official SCRABBLE Players Dictionary none of this would have happened. Everybody’s a victim, right? If we’d send him one, he said, this type of violence would be eliminated. But these guys got off easy. In 1983, according to the Houston Chronicle, thirty-one-year-old Anthony Dutton was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at the El Paso county jail during an argument over SCRABBLE rules.
This kind of stuff would ultimately be the province of the North American SCRABBLE Players Association and Hasbro personnel. The NSA would now devote itself exclusively to outreach for the National School SCRABBLE Program, to initiatives with libraries, literacy groups, Scouts, parks and recreations departments, and the like, and to public relations and media.
We performed those duties from July 2009 until July 1, 2013. But while our change was happening, so were several things at Hasbro. Chief among these, as reported in various newspapers, was Hasbro’s decision to consolidate most of its U.S. executives in one location: Rhode Island. So while the East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Games Group would still manufacture the game, everything would be run out of Rhode Island. As these things often go in corporate America, this resulted in many resignations, firings, and transfers. Before long hardly anyone from the team of executives we’d been working with for twenty years at Hasbro Games was left at the company.
Going forward, the NSA and I would now be working with an entirely new group of corporate executives from Rhode Island. Early on, a few team members assigned to SCRABBLE left or were reassigned before we even met them or could get any traction. When we finally settled into our new team, there was one glaring thing that struck me: titles.
For most of my SCRABBLE career with Hasbro, our regular marketing meetings included Hasbro Games directors, vice presidents, senior vice presidents, and, often, the president of Hasbro Games. At our new meetings in Rhode Island, Hasbro was represented by a senior product manager, a director, and an assistant manager. In military terms, I’d gone from working with the generals and colonels to the lieutenants and captains. Don’t get me wrong: they were smart and eager, and I liked them personally, but I’d gone from working closely with the power base and decision makers to, in many cases, never even meeting them. Instinct and experience told me that this did not bode well for the NSA, SCRABBLE, or me.
In the fall of 2012 the NSA staff and I did the dance with the new Hasbro regime. We mutually agreed that the National School SCRABBLE Program and attendant outreach would continue to be our focus, as the future of the game heavily relied on its success. As I’d done about every six months for the previous decade, I also urged Hasbro to ratchet up its SCRABBLE Internet presence and commitment in the following ways: create a safe School SCRABBLE site where kids could play as both individuals and as part of a school team. Consider online tournaments for both adults and kids. And, dammit, please fix the only official existing SCRABBLE app on Facebook.
That particular flaw had been bothering me since the day it was introduced. The flaw? You can play a fake word on the official Facebook SCRABBLE app and not be penalized! The phony wo
rd simply comes off the board, and you can keep trying until a word is good. This bugged me and other players for a number of reasons. First, it violates the most fundamental rule in SCRABBLE: a word has to be in the dictionary to be good in the game. Otherwise, it comes off the board and the player is penalized by missing a turn. This flaw also favors the weaker player. Think about it. People spend years improving their SCRABBLE arsenal of words, yet some newbie can walk in off the digital street and keep throwing letters out there until he or she gets a bingo. (I went to the SCRABBLE Facebook site the day I wrote this in 2014. Over decade later, this has not been corrected.)
But I really should not have been surprised. I remember going to Electronic Arts in Northern California a decade earlier to see the SCRABBLE Facebook app in its final stage of development before launch. Hasbro had granted EA the SCRABBLE license earlier, and everyone was under pressure to make the deadline.
After a demonstration from an enthusiastic team of young electronic gamers, I saw this and other aspects that seriously needed to be addressed. No one argued with my points; they were too obvious and valid. In frustration, I asked the team what SCRABBLE experts had been involved in the research, design, and development of this new version. Everyone was quiet for a second; then someone muttered something along the lines of “One of our designers, Jeff, and his girlfriend are SCRABBLE fanatics. They play, like, almost every night.”
I said nothing. I’d seen this movie before in my business experience. It’s about, at the end of it all, the deal being more important than the execution. It often seemed more important to meet the contractual deadline—show me the money—than doing it right. God forbid you get the product the best it can be, then you launch it.
Word Nerd: Dispatches From the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground Page 15