[HN Gopher] The New York Times buys Wordle
___________________________________________________________________
The New York Times buys Wordle
Author : lucis
Score : 294 points
Date : 2022-01-31 21:34 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| talawahtech wrote:
| > Wordle was acquired for an undisclosed price in the low-seven
| figures.
| lucis wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220131213921/https://www.nytim...
| hwers wrote:
| Glad the guy made bank from it. I'd literally had a few worried
| minutes about the injustice of making something so viral and it
| not e.g. translating to more security health and happiness for
| his family.
| d23 wrote:
| Great job Josh!
| julienb_sea wrote:
| I wonder what % of NYT app users do the daily crossword. I would
| imagine its a very significant percentage, which likely is why
| NYT is interested in acquiring and integrating a new word game
| into their app experience.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| NYT crossword has a different subscription than NYT news. I
| suspect increasing the number of news subs who also have a
| crossword sub is a major part of this acquisition. They'll
| start showing "play wordle on our crossword app" ads on the
| main app.
| mttjj wrote:
| I still enjoy "playing" this every day. I'm down to a 3-4 guess
| average. I suppose I'll keep playing as long as my Safari Web App
| continues to function the same as it does today. Once it no
| longer works or is locked behind a bunch of ads then I'll go back
| to doing something else for 10-30 mins every morning.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Ready for the NYT_First_Said to NYT_Wordle clue pipeline
| voxadam wrote:
| Paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/ShuaI
| smallerfish wrote:
| Or just click padlock in the chrome location bar, choose
| cookies, and block all cookies on the domain.
| cletus wrote:
| This reminds me of another fad (Draw Soemthing). Zynga bought
| OMGPOP for $200M [1] right at its peak of popularity, shutting it
| down a year later [2].
|
| Remember another fad: HQ Trivia [3]?
|
| I honestly don't even know what Wordle is. No shade on anyone who
| enjoys it. I just don't think anyone will be talking about it in
| 6 months.
|
| [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/03/21/zynga-
| acq...
|
| [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2013/06/04/zynga-shuts-down-omgpop-
| on...
|
| [3]: https://productmint.com/what-happened-to-hq-trivia/
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Check out out. It's a very simple word game that requires no
| login. No ads.
|
| You're probably right about it being a temporary fad.
| teen wrote:
| Wordle is too easy if you have a text editor and a scrabble word
| finder. Neither of which I would consider cheating... I think
| it's a fad unless they change the game up.
| [deleted]
| evan_ wrote:
| Baseball is too easy if the batter has a tennis racket and a
| motorcycle.
| florkledorkle wrote:
| That comparison doesn't hold, though. You'd ground quite
| short with a tennis racket because of the give in the racket
| (which absorbs all the momentum in the ball that you're
| using), and by the time you were to get atop the motorcycle
| to ride to first after you hit that ground ball, you'd
| already be out. I bet it'd be pretty close to a bunt or break
| the racket, honestly. Baseballs have energy and a big part of
| it is utilized in the hit to add to distance. Think about the
| inverse: hitting a tennis ball with a bat instead of a
| racket.
|
| Even with a perfectly placed hit it's hard to imagine a
| motorcycle improving the run to first, too, and that gets
| even worse when you're thinking about other bases. Going to
| first you have the momentum of your swing to help you get
| going too, particularly if you bat left. I'd honestly like to
| see that tried, because I bet a runner would win every time
| even if you made the rule touching with a tire instead of
| your body.
|
| I'm struggling to improve on your metaphor, though, and
| historically cheating has focused on other things like sticky
| balls to improve handling. I think it's pretty hard to hit
| better with a different tool than a bat, short of making the
| bat bigger but keeping its properties. Maybe a treated 2x4?
| Corked bats come to mind too as something that's been tried,
| and what that does to the bat and swing is interesting, but
| it pretty conclusively doesn't make you hit better or farther
| (the opposite; we've played with it on my team).
| evan_ wrote:
| Fine. It's easy if the batter has one of these:
|
| https://youtu.be/Puo6Vgcbxps
|
| And we assume that the motorcycle is already started and
| warmed up and the base path is paved etc. etc.
|
| Also the batter has a gun.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| Similarly I get exceptional times in marathons, when I ride my
| motorbike and start half way around the course.
| pdpi wrote:
| "Given the Opportunity, Players Will Optimize The Fun Out of a
| Game"
|
| Wordle is a game. Games are meant to be fun. If you want to
| enjoy the game, don't meta-game it. Stop using a text editor
| and a word finder and see why we actually still enjoy it.
| cors-fls wrote:
| > Wordle was acquired for an undisclosed price in the low-seven
| figures.
|
| Did I read that right ? Wordle was valued above 1M. It seems
| crazy from the outside but I guess I never realized how popular
| it.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| For what it's worth, I haven't played a game consistently for
| close to 20 years but Wordle stuck like glue for some reason.
| I've only missed two words in 3 weeks. It's kind of addictive.
| I might stop tomorrow, who knows, but it's interesting that I'm
| still returning to it day after day.
|
| I'm notoriously bad at picking up habits too, even if it's
| something I want to do.
| yupper32 wrote:
| It's addictive but it's also impossible to burn out since
| it's just one per day.
|
| If it was unlimited I would have likely gotten bored of it
| day 2.
| akozak wrote:
| Given their metrics (reportedly ~2M daily actives & growing) it
| struck me as cheap.
| redisman wrote:
| The road to monetize those players and to make let's say $2M
| net would be a huge pain in the ass. I would also have just
| sold and moved on to the fun part of a new project
| dymk wrote:
| I enjoy Wordle specifically because it's zero friction to
| play (aka there are no ads, no signup, no popups, no nags to
| subscribe for "$1 a week") - which of course will be the
| first thing NYTimes adds.
|
| Real bummer, I enjoyed the collective experience of sharing
| the emoji square badges with friends in group chats. It was a
| fun daily challenge that anybody could hop in on at any time.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Dordle is arguably more fun and won't be hidden behind a paywall
| in the near future :) https://zaratustra.itch.io/dordle
| guiseroom wrote:
| Seven figures for a five-letter word game.
| leifg wrote:
| Is there any IP attached to wordle?
|
| What was preventing them from paying someone to build a clone?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Backlash. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-
| news/creator...
|
| > A developer who created a copycat iOS version of Wordle
| admitted that he was "wrong" to try to monetize the daily word
| game after he generated backlash online and Apple removed the
| clone from its App Store.
| xtracto wrote:
| I wonder, now that the original Wordle is owned by a mega-
| corp, would people feel the same if other clones appeared?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Kinda wild since it's just a javascript ripoff and slight mod
| of Word Mastermind, which was itself based on an older but
| similar game.
| woobar wrote:
| I think these two ideas made it a success more than some
| old games it is built on:
|
| 1. Whole world playing against each other trying to guess
| same word every day
|
| 2. Easy way to share your results without spoiling the game
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Wordle _is_ the IP.
| tcpekin wrote:
| Congrats to Josh for a 7 figure payout - I just hope it remains
| as barrier-free as it does now.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Wordle could be an effective free feeder into NYT's more
| complex games and the game subscription. I hope they don't
| inhibit that.
| paxys wrote:
| https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1488264128422678535
|
| > for a price "in the low seven figures"
|
| That's a lot cheaper than I expected, considering it has a
| dedicated daily user base in the millions. ~$1/active user is an
| absolute steal if you are just talking customer acquisition, let
| alone the actual asset and brand. NYT essentially just bought the
| hottest new social network.
|
| On the other end though, a single developer getting paid millions
| for a few days worth of work certainly doesn't hurt.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > That's a lot cheaper than I expected
|
| Yeah, same here. I would like to compare the most valuable
| numbers to something like HQ Trivia, which was far more
| expensive to run (even when they weren't giving away $X00k per
| day in prize money).
|
| Something very special about it, a few items that jump out at
| me:
|
| - No permissions nags or signup required
|
| - Massively popular seemingly overnight, despite no multiplayer
| features
|
| - Sharing your score is both cryptic / interesting to noobs and
| a big network factor
|
| - The one-puzzle-per-day part seems to put bring everyone
| together
| zerocrates wrote:
| Spelling Bee already is free and shares many qualities with
| Wordle: one puzzle per day, simple premise... I wonder if you
| see them try to add more "sharing" features to it. I see
| people share redacted screenshots of Spelling Bee every once
| in a while, but it's more work to do that.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| The free version of Spelling Bee is limited: it cuts off
| once your score reaches "Solid", less than half way to
| "Genius".
| zerocrates wrote:
| It does? I haven't tried the free version in a long time
| but now that you say it, that does ring a bell...
|
| Well that certainly doesn't help for virality.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Agreed, it's a coup for the new york times customer acquisition
| team.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I have to assume this figure is for the name alone.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I expect the factors keeping it from being higher include: the
| possibility that it's a fad and vanishes as fast as it rose, or
| the fact that recreating it from scratch is also just a couple
| days work.
| Eridrus wrote:
| I think an undervalued bit of value here is that everyone is
| guessing the same word every day, enabling the social sharing
| of "wordle plots".
|
| So even if you have a recreation, you need to own the
| canonical word list to gain the social sharing value that
| helped it spread.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I'm having flashbacks to Zynga buying Draw Something right as
| it was peaking for 200 million before a total collapse.
|
| That being said, Wordle at a few million for access to that
| many daily users... Doesn't take a ton of them signing up for
| NYTimes puzzle accounts to make the math pencil out.
|
| Happy for the creator, avid fan of the game myself. It's the
| perfect 10 minute break in the middle of the day.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. I'm sure I will
| eventually but for now it's a fun quick puzzle that I'm not
| allowed to get sucked into for more than 10 minutes a day.
|
| Seriously trying to internalize some design lessons from it
| and might pivot a couple puzzle game ideas (that are still
| pretty early) to incorporate some of the ideas of Wordle.
| Unforunately those puzzle ideas aren't quite as inherently
| viral, in that they pretty much just have one solution and
| not multiple paths to a solution you can show off...but at
| least the one set challenge per day I can incorporate.
| pge wrote:
| I am actually surprised how high the price is given this.
| Hard for me to imagine Wordle is still popular a year from
| now.NYT must be counting on converting x% of Wordle users
| into subscribers so the acquisition price is effectively
| advertising spend.
| cyral wrote:
| Due to it being so simple to make, there are also tons of
| clones of the app on the app stores since there isn't
| actually an official app. I imagine a lot of people are
| actually playing those clones and not the website.
| distribot wrote:
| Is the couple days work thing really relevant? You could have
| a solid Airbnb clone in a couple months (I'd imagine) and
| it's worth thousands of times Wordle. I think it has to be
| customer base, IP, and developer team that they're really
| paying for.
| woah wrote:
| > You could have a solid Airbnb clone in a couple months
| (I'd imagine)
|
| I've never worked there, but I imagine you are hilariously
| wrong. You couldn't even make static copies of the website
| and mobile apps on all platforms in a couple months. That's
| not even talking about the servers needed to serve a high
| volume CRUD app with built in messaging platform. There's
| also the fact that none of it would stay running without
| the active maintenance by the ops team and developers.
| Zooming out, the consumer facing stuff we are talking about
| probably makes up about 10% of their total codebase and the
| practices around it. Zooming further out, the business
| would grind to a halt without the operational practices and
| personnel keeping it running.
|
| You might be able to make a clone of what Airbnb looked
| like a few months after it started in a few months.
| bbulkow wrote:
| While building all of airbnb is hard, let's look at a
| clone like outdoorsy, which is airbnb for rv's. It was
| very functional a year ago, and i doubt if it took a
| decent team more than a few months. The lore of how to
| build for scale is now far more widely known, and anyone
| doing dd on a codebase can figure out if scaling a
| monolith will require a full scorched earth or whether
| its has nice modularity allowing it to scale in flight,
| and/or get to fairly high scale with light application of
| autoscale shards and now commonplace cloud methodology.
|
| The issue is brand and usability, and wordle has it. The
| method for social sharing is genius, i think. A great
| example of privacy by design (sharing is explicit and
| through an image not a share button going who knows
| where).
| gowld wrote:
| There is no Wordle IP except the name and the color scheme.
|
| Developer time would cost $10K.
|
| Customer base... who like wordle because it's a simple,
| clean, free, not NYT.
| sequoia wrote:
| There's not much network effect for wordle. If you make
| another one tomorrow I can just as easily play it there. To
| be honest buying his game was as much a courtesy from the
| times as anything, if they were unscrupulous and didn't
| fear brand hit, they could simply copy it.
| luplex wrote:
| It might be a defensive acquisition. They don't want free
| word games to be out there. They want a monopoly on word
| games.
| zamadatix wrote:
| They definitely bought it for the current userbase not
| the actual content, the NY Times article opens straight
| into how they are hoping to switch it to a subscription
| after the "initial" period.
|
| Even if they only convert 2% of current players to 1
| years worth of subscription that's 2 million of whatever
| "low millions" they put into it without having to grow
| their own userbase from scratch while competing with the
| original free one everyone is already using today.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| You could have a better Twitter even faster. So I suspect
| you're right.
|
| Isn't the dev team one guy? I don't think they are hiring
| him.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| Also the possibility that it will lose all its charm now that
| NYT has to figure out how to make money from it. Part of the
| fun is that its a goofy little niche project.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| NYT does crosswords well. I suspect they'll put wordle on
| the crossword app and use it to get people to get a
| crossword subscription.
| tinco wrote:
| Maybe I'm overly optimistic but it's such a low amount that
| maybe NYT doesn't really need to recuperate much. Just
| attaching their brand to it and posting a message on it
| every month or two is already worth it for them.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| While I play wordle, I'm not sure that it will be popular a
| year from now so I think that's a good price for him.
| justinator wrote:
| But but but Wordle is one step beyond Towers of Hanoi when it
| comes to basic programming exercises.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Considering there is no revenue at all right now, and he's
| likely spending thousands on hosting, he was probably dying to
| offload it. Especially bec there's 100s of knockoffs now.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| From what I can tell it's all client side, including all 5
| letter words. You could host it pretty cheaply.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Considering there is no revenue at all right now, and he's
| likely spending thousands on hosting, he was probably dying
| to offload it._
|
| Thousands?
|
| It's a 60kb Javascript file, seems quite static to all users,
| and appears to be cached and delivered from CloudFlare. I
| don't think their free accounts have bandwidth limits, just
| feature limits, so... it's probably more "pennies" on hosting
| than "thousands." Given the popularity of it, it's a good bet
| that it's almost always in the CF cache, so very few requests
| going through to the origin.
|
| This is more of a "You could host it on a home ISP" type
| project with how well caching systems handle it. Or toss it
| in a Google Cloud Storage bucket, which has reduced egress
| fees to CF and it'll still be constantly cached.
|
| Nothing I see indicates it's the slightest bit expensive to
| host.
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| From an interview with the developer:
|
| > put Cloudflare in front of my website; then more
| recently, we migrated the hosting to Amazon S3, which can
| scale indefinitely as long as I'm happy to pay for it.
|
| ...
|
| > it does cost me a bit to keep the servers up to run
| Wordle
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/12/josh-wardle-interview-
| word...
| dymk wrote:
| He's probably paying tens of dollars per month if he put
| Cloudflare in front of it.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I think part of the success of wordle was the network effect
| of having a single word to share your success or failure with
| everyone who's playing. For a group of friends you could
| probably get people to switch but there's still the wider
| population effect of the shared puzzle each day. That second
| is much harder for any copycats to replicate.
| atarian wrote:
| Who could have predicted a game with no strings attached would
| end up selling for so much.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Did the dev had some copyright/patents on the game? Why didn't
| the NY Times just clone it? Surely they could have leverage
| their users to start to use their version?
| gowld wrote:
| They are buying the audience, like HN or Reddit.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > NYT essentially just bought the hottest new social network.
|
| No one comes to wordle wanting a social network. It's nice
| because there's no built in social or ad bs and the results can
| easily be shared anywhere you want if you want.
| giarc wrote:
| No ads, no pay to play, no upgrades, no sign in, no social
| graph, takes 2 minutes per day, everyone plays the same/one
| puzzle per day, unwritten rules you don't ruin it for others,
| etc etc. The perks are great, I hope the NYT doesn't change
| it. I could take an ad, but changes to anything else might
| make me stop playing.
| paxys wrote:
| I disagree. In fact I'd say no one comes to wordle just to
| play a word game for 5 minutes and then forget about it.
| People share their solution grids all over the internet and
| private groups. They discuss their strategies and favorite
| start words. Late night hosts all play it on their shows.
| There's a new Wordle meme trending on Twitter every day. Heck
| people are so passionate about it that online backlash forced
| Apple to remove clones from the App Store and Twitter to
| remove bots that post spoilers - in under a day.
| doodpants wrote:
| > In fact I'd say no one comes to wordle just to play a
| word game for 5 minutes and then forget about it.
|
| I do. And I'd be surprised if I'm the only one.
| julian55 wrote:
| You're not.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Sure you aren't the only one, but looking at real data vs
| anecdotes (https://morningconsult.com/2022/01/20/wordle-
| millennials/), 59% of adults and 73% of millennials who
| play wordle are sharing their results on social media.
| Haydos585x2 wrote:
| My favourite part is that I don't need to care or think
| about it once I'm done. I can have a nice little puzzle
| to start the day and then move on.
| greymalik wrote:
| > there's no built in social or ad bs and the results can
| easily be shared anywhere you want if you want
|
| Not for much longer. NYT has to recoup that investment
| somehow.
| artificial wrote:
| Call to uninstall the app?
| zippergz wrote:
| There is no app to uninstall.
| ezekg wrote:
| Oh there will be, though.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| There is one freemium model for Wordle that has seemed
| obvious to me since the first time I launched it on a
| laptop after playing the first few on mobile: sync. The
| emphasis on historical play data and streaks make portable
| continuity a premium good for this particular game.
|
| I had actually kind of been hoping Wardle would have the
| same idea and that I would at some point be able to pay a
| few dollars a year for an account I could sign into to keep
| my Wordle career in sync. It looks like that account will
| now be an NYT account, and while it won't make me a
| subscriber by itself, it's one more benefit to weigh in
| potentially subscribing at some point.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Wordle would actually fit in perfectly with the NYT
| crossword app.
|
| The business model is that you get the latest puzzle for
| free and you can pay a subscription to get access to old
| ones. Not sure how much money they make, but I've paid more
| to them than most apps in the store.
| singlow wrote:
| I am a regular user of the NYT games page. As long as you
| have adblock enabled its a pretty good experience. For some
| games they might post a leaderboard and certain games like
| the crossword require you to have a subscription. But many
| others are free and have no login requirement such as the
| Spelling Bee [1].
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee
| missedthecue wrote:
| I ran into this after a few minutes of play.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/b8P2iVM.png
| missedthecue wrote:
| It could simply be content for their offering. Like when
| Netflix buys the right to a movie, they don't inject ads
| into it, it simply makes a Netflix subscription marginally
| more enticing.
|
| And for the NYT, a company that made a $55M profit last
| quarter, it's probably a good bet.
| meerita wrote:
| I agree it's cheap. Maybe the creator didn't wanted to engage
| into a complicated negotiation and sold.
| notahacker wrote:
| Probably worked out as a better monetization strategy than
| slapping AdSense on it...
| dwighttk wrote:
| what is a social network? It is just user accounts, no
| connections.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Odd that they (understandably) don't disclose what they paid, but
| then drop the rather unambiguous hint of "lower seven figures."
| Congratulations to Wardle; not a bad exit for an ingeniously
| simple web-based game.
| endisneigh wrote:
| i don't get it.
|
| wordle got popular because NYT publicized it, then they buy it.
|
| why would they buy it? They could've just cloned it in a few days
| with their team, no?
| gaws wrote:
| > why would they buy it? They could've just cloned it in a few
| days with their team, no?
|
| It would be very obviously the NYT ripped the game off from the
| original, and that wouldn't look good. They had the money to
| buy it and did so.
| endisneigh wrote:
| companies rip things off all of the time. purchasing is
| hardly the only option, or even the best option.
| cm2012 wrote:
| They bought it for low 7 figures, thats a huge bargain. It
| would have cost them that much in developer time to build it,
| forget about the marketing.
| endisneigh wrote:
| you have to be joking. you think it would cost 7 figures to
| recreate wordle?
| cm2012 wrote:
| For a big company like the NYtimes, it would not surprise
| me. But in any case the built in audience is what they're
| buying.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| In my experience, businesses are wildly capital-inefficient
| at shipping software.
|
| The personnel needed to ship something in a tech org with
| 100s or 1000s of employees might look like...
|
| - Front-end developer - Back-end developer - DevOps / Infra
| - UX/Designer - Product Manager - Engineering Manager -
| Security, Risk & Compliance, Legal (ensure someone doesn't
| sue NYT over some mis-worded privacy policy or mis-use of
| user data)
|
| If project planning occurs in quarters (or half-quarters,
| for those "nimble" cos), getting the Wordle project green-
| lit means spending 1/4-1/8th year of salaries/benefits for
| this squad all-in.
|
| Kudos to the creator for making this sale! Great timing,
| hope the money is life-changing in the best possible way.
| swalls wrote:
| What? Even a junior dev could clone Wordle in a day, maybe
| add a week for polishing the animations and such.
| cr1895 wrote:
| > It would have cost them that much in developer time to
| build it
|
| I'm not really into the backstory but isn't this game a quick
| project of one software engineer in his free time?
| alx__ wrote:
| Because that would have been an asshole move. This gets them
| views, goodwill, and probable revenue stream. In long term
| probably worth more than what they paid
| thehappypm wrote:
| Why would anyone play the clone? The real game is free and
| has the network effect.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'd agree if they don't touch it at all, but since they
| bought it they're going to monetize it. what difference does
| it make at that point? do people not go on instagram for
| shamelessly ripping off snapchat? wordle itself is just a
| clone of lingo, etc. etc.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| Instagram predates Snapchat
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I disagree. I think they'll throw it on their already
| monetized crossword app(they claim to have 1 million
| subscribers) as a freebee to get people in the door. They
| might let you do extra words if you have a subscription,
| but a lot of the beauty of wordle is 1 word per day which
| creates a strong network.
| jffry wrote:
| They could also go the route of "daily word is free,
| archives are part of the subscription", or similar
| dools wrote:
| You can clone a website but you can't clone a million people
| searching "wordle" every day in Google.
|
| So imagine they did clone it then they paid a million dollars
| in paid traffic to it OR they would simply be preaching to the
| choir.
|
| A million is probably a fraction of NYT total paid ad spend
| monthly and look at what they're getting for that!
|
| It's a bargain
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| goodwill. And he was looking for someone to take over 'running
| it', surely offloading monitoring it/any kind of server upkeep
| and a department of NYT games ppl making the clues etc would be
| helpful at this point. Hats off to him.
| zwieback wrote:
| Congrats! I'll keep playing until the paywall comes crashing down
| on my fingertips.
| cbdumas wrote:
| This makes perfect sense and fits in well with their games
| subscription offering [0]. I'll be sad to see Wordle go behind a
| paywall but this is great for the creator.
|
| [0] https://www.nytco.com/press/both-cooking-and-games-
| reach-1-m...
| gpas wrote:
| I remember when almost everyone here was against his choice to
| not monetize from the first day. Instead he released a user
| friendly app, no ads, no trackers. Great success, massive user
| base, huge money.
|
| Well played.
| redisman wrote:
| 7 figures for a solo dev game of such small scope is amazing,
| people here have way too high expectations. Most indie games
| make $0-10000
| milemi wrote:
| It's a standalone js app and all the future words are in it. You
| can get a word for any date by setting your system clock to that
| date.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm guessing they'll jumble that around a bit and hide future
| answers when they integrate it into their app.
| alx__ wrote:
| Yes, but there's little joy in doing that.
| milemi wrote:
| Until now, but sticking it to NYTimes might create some joy.
| basisword wrote:
| How does cheating yourself out of fun 'stick it' to anyone
| but yourself?
| trollied wrote:
| It's insane that they purchased it - the game itself is a rip-off
| of a UK gameshow from the 1980s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(British_game_show)
| Graffur wrote:
| What exactly are the NYT buying here? Are they buying the traffic
| which must be quite large. Or are they buying users? Surely
| Wordle is a passing fad and, in a year, will retain less than 40%
| of all players playing right now. After that, how many are going
| to buy a NYT subscription based on this.
|
| They could have gotten Wordle recreated in less than a week. iirc
| NYT used to employ Rich Harris of Svelte fame so I would imagine
| they have the developer skills to recreate Wordle.
|
| Are they buying a brand? How can they make money off it?
|
| Is this a marketing/advertising play?
| jklinger410 wrote:
| NYT have probably the strongest crossword puzzle bases in the
| world, they probably saw Wordle as either a competitor or a
| nice addition. They have a side quest basically of owning
| clever little games like that.
|
| My guess is they've been hearing about it a ton from their
| crossword userbase and wanted the traffic, users, and IP.
| pdpi wrote:
| > My guess is they've been hearing about it a ton from their
| crossword userbase and wanted the traffic, users, and IP.
|
| I'm sure that they've been hearing a lot about it internally
| from their own crossword people as well. This probably had a
| lot of internal buy-in.
| yupper32 wrote:
| It's probably a similar user base to the daily NYT mini
| crossword. I can imagine it having a similar pay structure
| too -- free daily, paid archive.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > It's probably a similar user base to the daily NYT mini
| crossword.
|
| I would bet there's not a lot of overlap - Wordle is pretty
| much the antithesis of a crossword to me. Small number of
| guesses, each guess gives you more information towards the
| answer, and it's probably no more than 5 minutes for a
| game.
| pell wrote:
| >so I would imagine they have the developer skills to recreate
| Wordle
|
| To be fair, I think most averagely skilled developers could
| copy Wordle within a very short time. I am very much reminded
| of the game 2048 though. While it definitely was a fad too, it
| still has a huge base of players even now. So maybe the NY
| Times sees some potential there.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| I think NYT cloning wordle would have had a huge backlash. Lots
| of bad PR, a wave of protest cancellations, etc. If they wanted
| Wordle in the app this was the best way to do it.
| corobo wrote:
| Did you see the backlash to the knockoff apps that popped up? A
| cheeky milly or two is cheaper than a boycott
| underdeserver wrote:
| You're all overthinking this.
|
| The Times crossword is a lot of fun for a lot of people. So is
| Wordle.
|
| The Times bundles these with other games in their game
| subscription.
|
| Let's say a 200,000 English speakers around the world pay 5
| bucks a month for it. Let's say Wordle pushes that to 250,000
| due to the extra exposure. Within a year they've recouped their
| expenses. Everyone wins.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're buying the right to slap "like this game? try our other
| ones! you'll love the $39.95/year crossword!" on the top of the
| _real_ Wordle.
| endisneigh wrote:
| they're buying ad-space.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Surely Wordle is a passing fad and, in a year, will retain
| less than 40% of all players playing right now.
|
| I think you are off by two orders of magnitude, at least.
|
| The entire pandemic has been full of these flash-in-a-pan
| shared experiences.
|
| I don't get this purchase either.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| NYT crossword is the best word puzzle game app I've found.
| They're adding another notch to that. Expect revenue model to
| be similar to what they're already doing. 1 free a day, sub
| to get more words(along with more of all the other games they
| have).
| joshuacc wrote:
| What else? This is the only one that I am aware of.
| behnamoh wrote:
| NFTs are another example
| pshc wrote:
| Off the top of my head sourdough, Clubhouse, everything on
| TikTok, Animal Crossing, Amongus...
| cyral wrote:
| TikTok is definitely still going stronger than ever.
| Clubhouse on the otherhand was valued at $4b somehow and
| has now been cloned by every other social media platform.
| [deleted]
| clarle wrote:
| I think the New York Times got the perfect price for it, given
| that half the comments in this thread are "wow, that's a lot
| cheaper that I expected", and that the other half are "wow,
| that's a ridiculous windfall for just a few days of work".
| nsv wrote:
| When wordle first started to rise in popularity, I saw a lot of
| comments that the one-a-day format was too limiting, and people
| would get bored and forget about the site because one puzzle
| doesn't offer enough engagement. I think that actually it had the
| opposite effect, keeping people coming back every day. It just
| goes to show that what people say they want, and what actually
| works, can be very different.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| I like the one-a-day idea, and that it's the same for everyone.
|
| However, the game itself is exactly the same as 'Lingo' - an old
| US show that still has a UK version airing right now. It has also
| had its own app for a while.
|
| It's amazing how a couple of extra touches can make something
| explode in popularity.
| secondcoming wrote:
| To which UK TV show are you referring? It doesn't ring any
| bells with me.
| username3 wrote:
| What are the extra touches for those who never played Wordle?
| klyrs wrote:
| I think the real thing that made it go viral are the
| "certificates" it gives you for solutions, which get shared
| on social media:
|
| https://www.kaggle.com/benhamner/wordle-1-6
| cryptoz wrote:
| While that is a part of it, I have also heard that the
| virality was somewhat forced by journalists writing about
| wordle endlessly: as fans of word games themselves,
| journalists boosted its popularity in the earlier days,
| driving a lot of the 'viral' traffic.
| [deleted]
| superdisk wrote:
| Can somebody tell me how to generate one of these
| certificates? I can't find a button on the page at all to
| do it and I feel like a moron, since everyone and their dog
| is posting them on Twitter.
| jffry wrote:
| In the dialog that shows up after you finish Wordle,
| click the big green Share button and it's copied to your
| clipboard
| ihuman wrote:
| Press the graph icon next to the "WORDLE" on the top of
| the screen, then press "share"
| jamespullar wrote:
| After successfully solving the daily puzzle, you're
| presented with a small popup that includes stats and a
| share button. The share button adds the sequence of
| emojis to your clipboard.
| vgel wrote:
| When it pops up the results dialog after you win, there's
| a green "Share" button in the bottom right. If you closed
| the results dialog, you can get it to open again by
| refreshing the page.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| Well, there's no timer in wordle whereas in lingo you are
| against the clock. You only get to play one puzzle a day.The
| solution is the same for the whole world every day.
|
| Part of its success is the simplicity I think, and the fact
| you don't need an app.
| defaultname wrote:
| Free. No ads. Accessible to everyone. Convenient build-in share
| functionality and a common experience (as you mentioned the
| common daily word). And of course a clean, technically
| excellent implementation.
|
| If it had a single barrier (install an app, create an account,
| click through ads, etc), it would have been yet another of
| countless word games. It was a brilliant confluence for a
| momentary explosion in popularity.
|
| All along, though, people were yipping about the grand
| benevolence and moral supremacy of this version versus clones
| (when the app itself was, as you mentioned, not that derived
| from an existing game, even aping the coloring), and that all
| looks pretty silly now that the creator quite rightly managed a
| pretty lucrative "exit" for a trivial work. And I _applaud_
| them for it, and respect the brilliant choices made to get
| there.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| The implementation is so good. Completely client side, which
| was a stroke of genius when it started getting really
| popular.
| dankwizard wrote:
| And just like that, the fad passed.
| davidw wrote:
| Selling out now was absolutely the smart move unless he had big
| plans to make some kind of Wordle-themed empire.
| xchaotic wrote:
| Agreed. Sooner or later the fad would have passed anyway.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Ah so this is how they will get subscriptions.. dastardly plan!
| Zren wrote:
| Link to the game: https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/
|
| Pretty fun. If you read his homepage
| https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/ he mentions he created Reddit's
| "The Button" and "Place" April Fools games. Dude's pretty
| creative.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| The Button was pretty cool. I really love the UX on Wordle.
| Can't really explain why but it's just so pleasant to use.
| jms703 wrote:
| Whelp, it's now dead. Unusable as wirecutter, the last thing I
| used that they bought.
| eric_b wrote:
| > At the time it moves to The New York Times, Wordle will be free
| to play for new and existing players, and no changes will be made
| to its gameplay.
|
| "At the time" is the sticky bit.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| 1. There are a number of open source clones
|
| 2. If they want to spend 2M to build in features or integrate
| with their crossword, why shouldn't they make something back on
| it?
|
| NYT making money isn't scary. Imagine Microsoft getting its
| hands on this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| But it doesn't need new features, or to integrate with their
| crossword.
|
| It's like adding truffle shavings and gold flakes to a hot
| dog. It _misses the reason people love the hot dog_.
| defaultname wrote:
| Wordle is basically the 2022 Flappy Bird. It isn't
| particularly fun or challenging, but there's a weird social
| experience behind it. That fades fast, and I would say is
| already fading rapidly. If he got a lucrative exit
| strategy, good for him (though it makes all of the
| _moralizing_ around clones pretty nonsensical).
| marricks wrote:
| Who knows, NYTimes could use it to justify the next Iraq war
| /s
|
| More seriously, the creator promised to never have ads in
| it[1] now it's going to be in a site that has ads. Whenever a
| product/company is sold the creator can no longer make any
| promises and prior promises are null and void.
|
| NYTimes isn't some benevolent benefactor, WORDLE could have
| stayed in the realm of relatively untouched private
| enterprises that makes people's lives a little bit better
| (think Craigslist) and now I can look forward to a banner ad
| telling me I need to subscribe to NYTimes to save democracy a
| couple times a year.
|
| There are free clones, but talking to friends and random
| distant co-workers about todays word was fun. That won't
| last.
|
| [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/wordle-
| will-s...
| jordanpg wrote:
| NYT has maintained several free to play games for years now.
| This game is equally trivial with several of them, for example,
| Spelling Bee.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords
| outside1234 wrote:
| I mean they bought it for 7 figures - so yes, it might be a
| subscription feature eventually?
|
| Its not like they pulled an AWS and just ripped off an open
| source MIT licensed clone in their newspaper or something.
| paxys wrote:
| Note that they didn't mention advertising
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Surely a free alternative would quickly eclipse any paywalled
| NYT version in popularity. Part of what made this game so
| popular is that it's so accessible... no accounts, no ads,
| nothing.
| bitwize wrote:
| Well, I'm not _as_ upset about this as I was about the Microsoft
| /Actiblizzard merger, but I just can't wait for those "You've
| used 3 of your 5 free wordles for the month" modal popups to show
| up!
| daok wrote:
| Can someone explain me how come Wordle can be acquire since it is
| an implementation of another game called Lingo? Isn't there some
| copyright or other intellectual property belonging to someone
| else?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Rules cannot be copyrighted. I can make a Wordle clone right
| now and as long as I don't reuse assets/names there's nothing
| they can do about it. See also 2048, which is a clone of 1024,
| which is a clone of Threes.
| tolien wrote:
| > "The company said the game would _initially_ remain free to new
| and existing players. "
|
| (emphasis mine) Guess that means a paywall in 3...2...
| fells wrote:
| Does this mean as soon as I enter my second guess, I'm going to
| have a huge overlay to sign in to a New York Times account?
| tomovo wrote:
| Think of all the brands with 5 letter names!
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I was wondering the insidious way they would monetize but I
| think you nailed it.
|
| Drink Your Ovaltine
| yupper32 wrote:
| OREOS will be the answer once a week.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Yes, that is the day I stop playing wordle even though I'm a
| NYT crossword subscriber.
| sltkr wrote:
| Isn't the site entirely static, including the word list and
| daily answer? You should be able to download a local copy for
| yourself and play that from now on.
| alx__ wrote:
| > The company said the game would initially remain free to new
| and existing players
| basisword wrote:
| > initially
|
| Can't wait to phone them up to try and unsubscribe from my
| Wordle account some day.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I'm guessing it'll be bundled with their Spelling Bee and
| Crossword games, which is a separate subscription (and also
| easily cancelled).
| js2 wrote:
| The unsubscribe process has become easier. Last time I
| unsubscribed-a few months ago-I didn't have to talk to
| anyone, not on phone and not via online chat.
| paxys wrote:
| "Free" does not mean free from advertising and upsell.
| bubblethink wrote:
| It also won't work in private/incognito mode.
| klohto wrote:
| Here goes the private, ad-free experience. Hopeful Wardle sold it
| under certain conditions considering he didn't monetize when he
| had the chance.
|
| I know it'll remain like it was for some time but eventually be
| monetized.
| meetups323 wrote:
| > Wordle was acquired for an undisclosed price in the low-seven
| figures.
|
| Looks like he found a pretty solid monetization strategy.
| crate_barre wrote:
| A link to a html5 app in the App store on the wordle site
| would have made a lot more than that.
| redisman wrote:
| That would literally make $0. What are you talking about?
| Where is the revenue coming from?
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Does this mean Wordle was a free to play game?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglerfish
| dmillar wrote:
| I suppose we/(I?) should get started on an independent version.
| There's no way the Times doesn't some how paywall or otherwise
| ruin this.
| greatjack613 wrote:
| Oh man, another great game eaten by the big guys. Alternative -
| https://wordlle.app
|
| Anyone here care to speculate on the reason why we are seeing so
| many acquisitions in the game space?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be any reason you'd acquire Wordle in the
| first place. It's trivial to recreate it.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I assume that they're buying the brand, not the product.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yeah, I'm fairly confident they'll just reimplement it in
| their own app, as the code is trivial and honestly porting
| it would be harder.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if someone at NYT already built it
| and has it feature flagged off or something.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Weird. Did anyone else think NYT already owned Wordle?
| jacquesm wrote:
| For those of you thinking and commenting this was sold too cheap:
| that's a life changing amount of money right that, you won't be
| able to spend if you play it smart.
|
| Better _a_ deal at a lower than optimal valuation than _no_ deal
| at the best possible price.
|
| This thing may go down as fast as it went up, better to
| capitalize on it while it's hot.
| eric_b wrote:
| I can't read this link, but presumably this is the same content
| without the paywall? https://www.nytco.com/press/wordle-new-york-
| times-games/
| TT-392 wrote:
| Well, I guess it is dead
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Can't wait for the godawful monetization.
|
| Congrats to the creator, I would've done the same.
| anusood wrote:
| I love it - have cracked the code so I get the word within 3
| attempts. All about the vowels.
| shawnk wrote:
| What if we Come to find out his COUSIN runs the games division in
| NYT. Hahahaha classic story.
| DantesKite wrote:
| They're not just buying the game. It's trivial to make. They're
| buying the social network that comes with it.
| daenz wrote:
| I foresee this triggering an influx of kitschy word games trying
| to attain similar exits.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| I present, Flappy Words!
| habitue wrote:
| Nice job to the developer, this is probably the perfect time to
| sell. Honestly, I could imagine the price dropping by half in a
| few weeks as the fad dies down.
|
| Let NYT figure out how to monetize a simple easily copied game
| like this. I don't envy the team who is responsible for making
| this deal profitable for them.
| cbdumas wrote:
| This seems to fit very nicely into the set of mini games they
| sell a separate subscription to. And if their own claims are to
| be believed it seems that they have already successfully
| monetized them https://www.nytco.com/press/both-cooking-and-
| games-reach-1-m...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-31 23:00 UTC)