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?
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.
> 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.
> Filling in crossword answers also gives more info
Yeah, fair point, but...
> for everything it crosses.
Whereas in Wordle, every step is more info about the single answer - much more efficient. But I definitely should have worded it better - you're absolutely correct.
The main difference is that with Wordle there is very little "marginal creativity" required for each new puzzle. It's literally just another 5-letter word.
There's a whole bunch of perfect Wordle clones that get ~none of the traffic Wordle gets, and none of the viral word-of-mouth spread. The NYT uses word games as a subscription driver. So that's what they're buying here.
They could implement Wordle themselves, of course, but they wouldn't get the traffic or the interest from players.
If they kept everything just about as is except maybe a small NYT logo at the top and an update of the complete screen, I.e. "Next word in 13 hrs 37 minutes; meanwhile try our crosswords (enticing link)" then that would be a big win.
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.
Except the game is played by millions and will inevitably be played by many fewer in this scenario. People can trivially make clones but it won't be the same as part of the fun is that it's the same word for everyone, and I assume copying the day's word would be even more legally dubious than copying the gameplay.
So in that scenario, I don't think "everyone wins". A free, universal bit of fun will have become a paid, niche thing for NYT subscribers. The vast majority of (continuing and former) players will have lost something.
I don't at all begrudge the developer taking the opportunity to cash in, but if this is what the NYT do I certainly will resent their part in it. It's a bit of mild fun that doesn't need to be "monetised".
The crossword comparison is a bad one, btw. The setting of each crossword is a separate skilled, creative act. Not many people can do it, and those that do deserve to be paid for it. There is practically zero daily effort in running Wordle, just static hosting and choosing a word each day.
I don't expect wordle to change at all. The site will probably become NYT themed and try to push you to download the crossword app. Daily puzzle will still be free on the app and site. They just want more people in their puzzle ecosystem.
I hope you're right, but the NYT article isn't very promising. It says "The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players," and then spends the rest of the article talking about how their business is all about subscriptions.
They've paid over a million for it. It'll be nice if they keep it unchanged but I doubt they will.
I said that I don't resent the dev cashing in, and I said why the clones aren't a substitute.
Your comment amounts to "that's how it is, deal": zero information content, just an expression of a rather ugly attitude. I know that's how it is and whether I choose to be mad at NYT for it is entirely up to me. The fact that someone made money doing something doesn't oblige me to not think they're a dick for doing it.
Talking of which, whether the NYT do in fact make any money out of this remains to be seen. By buying it for 7 figures they've set themselves a high bar for that. It's entirely possible they'll end up having messed up something people were enjoying and lost both money and goodwill in the process. Kudos to the dev whatever happens, though.
Agreed. I spend about an extra $5 per month on my NYT subscription for the puzzles. Totally worth it because provides a few hours of entertainment each month. Wordle just keeps my subscription even more sticky.
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).
AC has a solid, hardcore userbase. That it sold 35m units and most of those quit by summer 2020 is normal for any game. No game lasts forever unless you really like it.
TikTok is a behemoth and just keeps growing.
A lot of people still play Among Us and like it. Malls are full of Among Us t-shirts and plushies.
That's most things, though. There's so much crap out there, most people keep moving to the next hot thing rather than keep consuming the same thing. How many people are still watching the Avengers Endgame movie today? Or season 8 of Game of Thrones? Probably roughly the same amount (proportionately) that are still playing Animal Crossing or Among Us today.
Animal Crossing did just get a major update that was well-received and tied to a premium Nintendo Online subscription a few months ago, btw. Still popular enough for that. Definitely nowhere as huge as it was two years ago though.
Animal Crossing was the perfect thing to be released when everyone was stuck in their homes at the start of the pandemic, though, as it offered an escape and even had a 'travel to an island' theme to it. My wife and a bunch of my friends put several hundred hours into it, and I put 55 hours into it, which is about three times as much as an Animal Crossing game usually gets out of me.
Among Us still has its fans. I join a group every once in a while that sets up monthly game nights for it. That one has dropped quite a bit though. Eventually the game was unofficially made into a game mode in Fortnite, from what I hear, and I think that game mode gets played more within Fortnite now than the Among Us game does, but I'm not really sure.
It's also not too far removed and most likely inspired by social deduction board games that have existed and have been popular since the Werewolf/Mafia game from 1986, which Among Us is basically an action Werewolf with minigames and cute, marketable characters.
Tiktok is larger than ever, that seems like a bad one to include. Sourdough was legit flash in the pan, I think.
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.
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.
I mean, I do think games come and go, but I think Wordle is some really solid design. It's paced and measured and feel like a mature experience, even though it's new.
NYT could absolutely clone the gameplay - it would be easy - but I think they would rightly be hounded by people attacking them for stealing the game. Instead, they settle on a reasonable (but low) purchase price that probably includes some consulting on how to expand the game, get the blessing of the original creator, and have a feel-good story about adopting and expanding a game people like.
Like, this is a good fit for the NYT "word game collection" brand, but because of the popularity they have to be careful about how they integrate it. I'm sure they paid a bit more than they wanted to, but not actually too much more than it would take to develop a clone, and what they really pay for is protecting against bad press. Seems fine to me.
>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.
That's disingenuous. While they are both sliding matching games, the end result is quite different. I actually preferred 2048 to Threes. It was much more relaxed and casual.
If anything, Threes made it big thanks to 2048. I would never have heard of it and bought it otherwise.
IIRC the author of 2048 decided not to monitise it because he based it on Threes, and only wrote it to see if he could write a game from scratch in a weekend.
The term wordle is very recognizable and a great way to introduce people to the nytimes games collection, which other than the crossword aren't well known
I can think of 3 ways that the NYT intends to profit off of this.
1) embed a link to times puzzles into the boilerplate "share" feature.
2) embed enticing pictures of other puzzles that the NYT owns in the actual game page itself.
3) embed links to wordle from existing puzzles, with the hope of preventing people from clicking away from the times collection of puzzles.
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?