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Games

The New York Times Purchases Wordle (nytimes.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the seems-fitting dept.
The New York Times says it has purchased the viral word-guessing game Wordle for "an undisclosed price in the low seven figures." The newspaper says it'll remain "free to play for new and existing players, and no changes will be made to its gameplay." From the report: Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, created the game as a gift for his partner. It was released to the public in October, and it exploded in popularity in a matter of months. Ninety people played the game on Nov. 1, Mr. Wardle said. Nearly two months later, 300,000 people played it. To play the game, people are required to guess a predetermined five-letter word in six tries. The yellow and green squares indicate that the Wordle player has guessed a correct letter, or a combined correct letter and placement. The buzz around the game can be attributed to the spoiler-free scoring grid that allows players to share their Wordle wins across social media, group chats and more. The game's creator, Josh Wardle, announced the sale in a tweet, writing: "If you've followed along with the story of Wordle, you'll know that NYT games play a big part in its origins and so this step feels very natural to me."

He adds: "I've long admired the NYT's approach to their games and the respect with which they treat their players. Their values are aligned with mine on these matters and I'm thrilled that they will be stewards of the game moving forward."
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The New York Times Purchases Wordle More

The New York Times Purchases Wordle

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  • Until NYT is bleeding money again, then it'll be paywalled. Good thing it is easy to replicate.

  • and now it's time to throw that game in the trash, expect a paywall in the coming months. All good things get monetized

    • It's weird, almost like people want to get paid for the things they put their work and energy into. I'm sure you don't get paid to do your job.

      • It's weird, almost like people want to get paid for the things they put their work and energy into. I'm sure you don't get paid to do your job.

        The guy who created it wasn't looking to get paid for his work, although he had every right to. What exactly work and energy did NYT put into this?

  • The game makes no money. The NYT bought it with intention of making money in sure. Expect it to change.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      The game will fall out of fashion and NYT will be stuck maintaining a lemon.

      • Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)

        by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:00PM (#62225059) Homepage Journal

        I'm curious if the New York Times realizes the degree to which Wordle is a social game. People are playing because their friends are playing. Throw up barriers to play, and people will just stop. People aren't going to pay $10/month or whatever the New York Times wants people to pay to access Wordle. It's something that's fun to do with friends because it's free and easy.

        As soon as it becomes ad-laden and annoying, people are just going to stop. And as people stop, other people will stop, because half the fun is "competing" against your friends.

        So yeah, I expect that the outcome of this will be Mr. Wardle gets his million dollars or however much they paid him, and the New York Times gets a word puzzle no one plays anymore. Congrats to Mr. Wardle for that.

        • I'm gonna guess they didn't just buy for over a million bucks without understanding it very well. There are certainly ways to monetize without charging a monthly fee. Remind me how much Slashdot charges you each month, and Google?

          • Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)

            by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:33PM (#62225191) Homepage Journal

            I'm gonna guess they didn't just buy for over a million bucks without understanding it very well.

            Based on other corporate purchase in the past, that seems like a very bad guess. Maybe the New York Times is better at it, but I'm guessing that at "low seven figures" it's a purchase that they're willing to write off as an experiment.

            There are certainly ways to monetize without charging a monthly fee. Remind me how much Slashdot charges you each month, and Google?

            Guarantee you if they start adding ads to it, the player base will start to dry up. Paywalling it will destroy the social aspect. I don't see any way to monetize it without driving the majority of the players away, either directly (by pissing them off) or indirectly (by having no one else they know playing it).

            Wordle works primarily because it's simple and free. Otherwise it's really not that much of a game. You get one play a day to guess one word. That's it. On it's own, it's a minor brain teaser. The reason it went viral is the social aspect, where people compare how they did with other people they know.

            It won't take much to destroy that. Every person that gives up on it due to ads or a paywall will have a "reverse network effect" on others.

            • The whole buzz around Wordle was due to its "niceness": free, ad-free, no pop-ups, invented by an unassuming boffin to entertain his family/friends. Like you say, any change to that is going to cause a backlash. There was a mini-backlash in the UK last month when people discovered it was using US English spellings. In six months' time it'll be forgotten.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Tablizer ( 95088 )

            > I'm gonna guess they didn't just buy for over a million bucks without understanding it very well.

            You falsely assume plutocrats are usually rational. Remember AOL and Time Warner? Sprint and Nextel? HP and Autonomy?

            • We certainly remember those failures. But failures to monetize are far from the norm. Do you remember Instagram and Facebook? LinkedIn and Microsoft? Android and Google? Most frequently purchases like this end up being money makers.

  • So Microsoft buys Activision.
    Blackberry sold off it's messaging and various patents.
    Sony buys Bungie.
    Now The New York times buy a game?

    Who's next??

    • Re:everyone buying gaming (Score:4, Funny)

      by sideslash ( 1865434 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:26PM (#62224987)

      Who's next??

      Glad you asked. After decades of negotiations beginning shortly after the game's introduction in 1973, Slashdot is tentatively announcing that it is considering purchasing the Hunt the Wumpus text based adventure game.

      The world will never be the same, but this is our new normal and we'd best get used to it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Russia acquires Ukraine :-(
    • I'm buying some cheap red wine on the way home from work.

  • RIP Wordle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:29PM (#62224995) Homepage Journal

    Well, RIP Wordle then.

    It went viral because it was ad-free, easily playable in a mobile browser, and quick to load.

    Guarantee it's about to be bogged down with trackers, and then later, ads. The creator has apparently confirmed it will be moved to the New York Time's website as well, which means a paywall is almost certainly on its way. (The New York Times very carefully said it would "initially remain free.")

    Unfortunately for the New York Times, Wordle is trivial to clone. And, not surprisingly, there are already plenty of clones. Apparently the code includes the entire word list for each "day" (this is how people can spoil it), so it's trivial to make a "true" clone that copies the original words on each day.

    There's no way for the New York Times to make money off this. As soon as they try, everyone is going to quit. Which means they're probably going to just keep on trying to squeeze more and more money out of the remaining players until it dies, an ad-laden, paywalled shadow of the original game.

  • In other words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @05:42PM (#62225019)
    A few months ago I made this simple little game for my partner. Dunno how or why but damn! did that little hobby project explode. Now someone offered me over $1m to buy my I'm bored maybe I should write a simple game work. You think I'm stupid or something? Hell yeah, I would have sold it for a decent cappuccino.
  • I give this a month before it's hid behind the NYT paywall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by klashn ( 1323433 )
      I hear this as a common statement, but the code was on Github, and forked multiple times already. There's no way they're going to stop people from hosting their own - sure it's not a single URL for everyone, but Streisand Effect be damned it will be everywhere!

  • this is a great outcome. I'm super happy for Wardle.

  • Lingo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday January 31, 2022 @08:03PM (#62225475) Journal

    Wordle is pretty much an exact copy of the US gameshow Lingo, which debuted in the 1980s.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    So, at best, his game happens to be exactly like a game that has existed for decades that millions of people already knew about, and at worst, is simply a blatant copy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mZHg ( 2035814 )

      My thought exactly, I was thinking of the French version "Motus" but same thing.

    • Wordle is pretty much an exact copy of the US gameshow Lingo, which debuted in the 1980s.>

      Not an exact copy. According to the Wikipedia page, Lingo always started by revealing the first letter of the word. It also allowed only 5 guesses, not 6.

    • The medium matters. And the extent to which one can do it with friends and family and engage with them matters.

      We don't complain that kids play baseball and that it's pretty much an exact copy of the game that the pros play. Participation is fun. I can't play Lingo with my girlfriend, so what the hell do I care that I could watch it on TV in the 80s?

      Sometimes it really is just about making something well, and making it available to the world at the right time.

  • Beauty and the Biz is for Plastic Surgeons who know they don’t know everything and are open to discovering the pearls to grow and scale a sellable asset when they’re ready to exit.
  • People are starting to get tired of others sharing their block board on their social media.

    • Because client side Java is heavy, largely unnecessary, and is on the way out, like Flash.

      There are far better ways to do things client side, especially simple things like Wordle.

      (So calm down, downmodding Java monkeys, I wasn't denigrating server-side Java, lol)

  • It's a real simple game and the source is out there, so create your own copy.

    https://github.com/hannahcode/... [github.com]

  • If it was intended as a gift to a partner, does it imply the partner actually got "low 7 figures"?

  • Its the end of the wordle, as we know it (and I feel fine)

  • I can rarely commit to an entire crossword but wordle is perfect for a mid-morning break. I'd say this is win-win for everyone: decent paper attracts more views, clever dev gets big payday and all of us get another free game with no obligation to buy anything

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