TITLE
I Figured Out Wordle’s Secret
AUTHOR
Ian Bogost
PUBLICATION
The Atlantic
YEAR
2022
Wordle! It’s a word game people are playing online. Each day, the game offers one new puzzle: Guess a five-letter English word correctly in six or fewer tries. After each guess, the game tells you which letters are correct, which are wrong, and which are the right letters in the wrong place. It’s fun! But why?
Games seem like trifles, and many are, which can make them difficult to take seriously as art or culture. Perhaps that’s why accounts of their success tend to focus on their peripheries. Wordle is easy to access, just a website you can visit from any browser or device without a download. It has what game designers sometimes call “juiciness,” a delightfulness of audiovisual response—in Wordle’s case, the way the game reveals the results of a guess letter by letter offers both drama and satisfaction. A charming backstory also underlies the game: A programmer made it for his partner, for love rather than money.
But none of these explanations captures the essence of Wordle’s seductive delight. In the game, you get six guesses to solve a puzzle. When it comes to the puzzle of Wordle, I’m going to solve it for you in four: its unoriginal design, its ritual comfort, its interpretive sharing mechanism, and—one that may disappoint you, but that you need to accept—the fact that it’s just a game, and games are fun.
TITLE
How ‘Vampire Survivors’ Went From Obscurity to 27,000 People Playing at Once
AUTHOR
Patrick Klepek
PUBLICATION
Waypoint: Games By Vice
YEAR
2022
What follows is, I’m aware, the tortured observations of a person who needs to log off. But I want to talk about the online dynamics of Wordle and what happens when things get very popular (hint: backlash!).
TITLE
How Wordle Became The Internet’s Omicron Pastime
AUTHOR
Steffi Cao
Ikran Dahir
PUBLICATION
Buzzfeed News
YEAR
2022
TITLE
Wordle creator overwhelmed by global success of hit puzzle
AUTHOR
Rachel Hall
PUBLICATION
The Guardian
YEAR
2022
TITLE
What to Do When Playing the Word Game Wordle Isn’t Enough? Solve It.
AUTHOR
Claire McNear
PUBLICATION
The Ringer
YEAR
2021
For a while in the late 2000s, developers at Rockstar New England thought they were working on the next big Rockstar game.
They were excited to push the company’s tech and to bring a cult hit into Rockstar’s vision for the future. They were excited for the chance to prove themselves as a Rockstar studio, having recently been purchased by the company. They were excited to lead development on Bully 2, the sequel to Rockstar’s critically acclaimed open-world adventure about life in a private school.
But things don’t always go as planned, and other obligations on a release schedule get in the way of passion projects. Rockstar New England’s Bully 2 was shelved in favor of other, more troubled projects in development, like Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
“[Rockstar New England] wanted to be sort of the golden child in the Rockstar thing, but it’s really hard when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time,” one developer says. “Living in the shadows of someone who casts a big shadow like Rockstar North, and trying to usurp that role, it’s really difficult and nearly impossible. But man, did they try. Oh, did they try.”
TITLE
The Version Of Bully 2 You’ll Never Get To Play
AUTHOR
Blake Hester
PUBLICATION
Game Informer
YEAR
2022
TITLE
How John Madden Became the ‘Larger-Than-Life’ Face of a Gaming Empire
AUTHOR
Kellen Browning
Kevin Draper
PUBLICATION
The New York Times
YEAR
2021
TITLE
A New Generation Stacks Up Championships in an Old Game: Tetris
AUTHOR
Zach Schonbrun
PUBLICATION
The New York Times
YEAR
2021