A Word About Wordle
By Stef Luthin
Josh Wardle didn’t set out to make a viral game. A software engineer in Brooklyn, he created the now-famous game "Wordle" for his partner, who loves word games like the New York Times’s Spelling Bee. Yet after being published in October 2021, the game went from having 90 players a day to over 300,000 - after being out for just 3 months.
Wardle has many things to thank for the game’s sudden popularity. It has a simple, unassuming design, only asks for a few minutes out of your day, and doesn’t pollute your vision with ads and banners. Wordle provides a break in your busy life when you don’t need to think about anything else except what today’s 5-letter word of the day is going to be.
That being said, another huge reason that the minimalist Wordle could take off like wildfire is due to social media. People began using emojis to share how they fared on the daily challenge, this becoming like a shared language amongst players. Though to the uninformed, it would look like a weird collage of green, yellow, and black squares - and perhaps such FOMO would be enough to get those unaware of Wordle to look into what all the hubbub is about. Boom, another player gained.
But that’s not all. Like how other games and movie series have fandoms, Wordle has its own corner of the internet of devout fans. More than just people who share their daily results, these folks will craft hilarious Tweets and videos that only fellow Wordle lovers will understand. Take one step onto the Wordle side of TikTok and you will find thousands of videos, some with millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes. (The hashtag #wordle itself has 1.1 billion views.) And with every viral and hysterical Wordle TikTok that hits an unassuming Gen-Z’s or millennial’s For You Page, the game is that much closer to getting one more devoted player.
The powerful relationship between social media and video gaming is nothing new. For instance, much insight can be gained from comparing FarmVille - launched on Facebook in June 2009 - to Wordle. They both encourage the participant to play daily: in Farmville, your crops would die out if you neglected to check in. In Wordle, a missed day would mean losing the satisfying streak you’ve worked weeks to obtain. Additionally, both games in their own ways are low-stress. According to a New York Times article, Mark Pincus, co-founder of Zynga (the company behind Farmville) “saw farming as a relaxing activity that would appeal to a broad audience.” And as previously discussed, Wordle also has a calming nature about it. No fancy graphics, just thirty squares on a white background inviting some letters to be plugged in.
And while FarmVille had the advantage of being a game directly embedded into Facebook and thus automatically appearing on newsfeeds, the social media fame of Wordle goes to show that such partnership is not a necessary component for a game to resonate with the Internet masses.
After 11 years, the original FarmVille shut down in December of 2020 due to the discontinuation of Adobe Flash support (the broader repercussions of which should definitely be analyzed at a later date). The future for Wordle on the other hand, while not free from obstacles, seems bright.
Already branching a bit from its roots, Wordle is no longer a site owned and operated by creator Josh Wardle. In January 2022, he sold Wordle to the New York Times for a sum in “the low-seven figures.” This was a sensible acquisition for the New York Times, whose suite of online word games is a big draw for monthly subscriptions. And while many players feared this would be the end of the free-to-play Wordle era, the NYT has yet to paywall it, honoring the original game in both spirit and aesthetic. While it’s still possible a subscription will be required to play Wordle in the future, doing so when the popularity and virality of the game is at its highest peak would be downright villainous. So, for now, the news outlet and puzzle provider will keep Wordle in its back pocket as a promising investment.
While the game is still making headlines and videos continue to proliferate on #wordletok, no game can stay in the online spotlight forever. But video games don’t need to keep being “viral” to make an impact and retain a devoted and reliable audience. Maybe the online content will get a few thousand less likes and reshares, but the word game community has proven to be a strong one (see the Spelling Bee’s Hivemind, for instance) and there is little doubt that people will continue playing for years to come.