TITLE
How newspaper games like Wordle became behemoths
AUTHOR
Carli Velocci
PUBLICATION
Game Developer
YEAR
2024
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
One of video games’ biggest recent success stories involves Wordle, a once-per-day word guessing game developed by software engineer Josh Wardle for him and his partner to play. It has a simple interface, is easy to understand, features no ads, and is free to play. Guess a five-letter word in six tries, come back the next day for another. So when it was released in October 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it caught on very quickly.[…]
Wordle’s massive popularity is just one inflection point in the history of newspaper games—typically word or number puzzles, crosswords, Sudoku, and other games you play once per day. These kinds of games have been popular for over a century, and almost every mainstream subscription publication you can think of has their own.
But there was something about Wordle that made publications and platforms take notice. LinkedIn launched three “thinking-oriented games” in May 2024, while Vulture unveiled Cinematrix, a grid-based movie trivia guessing game, in February. Subscription-based games platform Puzzmo launched in late 2023, offering standard fare like crosswords along with experimental endeavors like Pile-Up Poker, an oddly satisfying and challenging combination of poker and Sudoku. It was acquired by Hearst Newspapers a couple months later, and can be played across multiple websites like the San Francisco Chronicle.
Wardle says Wordle’s success is tied to its simplicity. “I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” he told the New York Times. “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day… Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”
Experts interviewed for this article agree on this… to a point. Wordle is a simple yet effective game that appeals to almost everyone. However, it also benefited from great timing, releasing during a pandemic where people were aching for community in a world where building it felt impossible, and showed what still needed to be done to push daily games to the next level. It was time for a change.
GAMES MENTIONED
Puzzmo
Wordle
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Zach Gage
Brooke Husic
Stella Zawistowski