Creator of World-Famous Word Guessing Game 'Wordle' Talks About Initial Concept and How It Was Sold to The New York Times – GIGAZINE

Guess the hidden word while typingWordleIt gained immense popularity as soon as it came out, and people copied the rules.similarGamealsoMostappearanceWordle developer will give a presentation about Wordle in late June 2024, including the initial name and specifications of Wordle,Sold to The New York TimesWe talked about why we do this.

Wordle's original name was Mr. Bugs' Wordy Nugz – The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/24186786/original-name-of-wordly-mr-bugs-wordly-noggs-wordly

Browser-based design toolfigma“It will be updated with new products and”figma amnesty internationalA conference where explanations like “Formation 2024“It’s done. Josh Wardle, the namesake and developer of Wordle, was a guest at Config 2024 and explained some of the key decisions he made while developing Wordle.

Figma Config 2024 | June 26-27 – Moscone Center SF
https://config.figma.com/

At Config 2024, Wardle showed off some prototypes as he began building Wordle. According to Mr. Wardle, in the first versions built for Android, the rule of thumb was “hit the 5-letter word in 6 tries.” That’s because Mr. Wardle said in a previous interview with The New York Times that “Wordle is a board game where you make inferences based on clues about the color of the pins” because he loves word games.Mastermind“I also made it as a gift for my partner, whom I loved.” And as he reveals, that’s because he follows the mastermind in terms of rules and concept.

Wordle Q&A is updated every day, so it's no longer possible to try multiple questions in one day, but in the initial release, when you clear one question, a new question appears, allowing you to challenge endlessly like this. Furthermore, since five-letter words were randomly thrown, there was a chance that even people who were fluent in English might be asked words they didn't know.

So Mr. Wardle created another game where you are given a list of words and you have to answer, “I know this word,” or “I don’t know this word,” or “I might know this word,” but I don’t know.” Mr. Wardle’s partner answered this and narrowed the list of 10,300 five-letter words down to 2,500 words.

The images below are some of the old game designs that Wardle showed off during his presentation. You can see that many game formats and systems were taken into consideration, such as changing the color of the hint display and the “✕” sign that indicates a number that can no longer be cleared.

These game designs were implemented in 2013, and the initial idea for the game's name was “Mr. Bugs' Wordy Nugz”. “If I had called it Mr. Bugs, I don't think it would have worked,” Wardle said. But although the game was close to being completed, it remained just an idea and development was delayed for 6 years without any work being done.

Then, around 2020, due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, I had more time, so I resumed developing Wordle by searching for ideas. At that time, the New York Times quoted Mr. Wardle as saying:Crossword puzzle“Or rearrange 7 letters to form a word”spelling beeI was playing a game called “. Note that both games can only be played once a day, and by playing every day you can maintain a 'clear consecutive record', and Wordle will adopt a similar system.

As a result, Mr. Wardle published Wordle on his personal website in 2021. The reason he published the game on a website rather than downloading it through an app is that “the general opinion about games is that you need an app to gain fans, but I didn’t want to do that” because it was just me and my partner who played the game, it made sense for me to create a website, so I thought it would be a good idea to publish it on a website so that a wider audience could play it. Just share the link and you’re “ready to play.” The image below is of Wordle before it was acquired by The New York Times, and the design is virtually unchanged from the current one.

For the first six months, only Mr. Wardle and his partner played Wordle. After that, it was shared with family and friends, and with the addition of a feature to share the results on Twitter, the number of users grew rapidly. Finally, on January 31, 2022, Wordle was acquired by The New York Times for “low seven figures” in US dollars and several hundred million yen in Japanese yen. “I think the news of the acquisition surprised a lot of people,” Wardle said. “It was a very clear decision for me to sell the games. I didn’t want to run a business. Wordle was so successful that I obviously could have taken it and said, ‘I run a great operation out of it if I wanted to, but there are a lot of things about running a game business that I don’t enjoy, and it was also clear that I didn’t want anything to do with it.’” Reason for the Acquisition

Wardle also said he didn’t want to monetize the games he created for his partners. Mr. Wardle didn’t want to make money from Wordle, but as Wordle grew in popularity, a number of copycat apps appeared on the App Store, making it difficult for individuals to continue publishing Wordle as a free game. “So selling Wordle to The New York Times was just a way to distance ourselves,” Mr. Wardle said.

App copies of popular word guessing game 'Wordle' have all disappeared in a single go after Apple's App Store was reported to be full – GIGAZINE

Finally, Mr. Wardle offered advice to those who want to make a popular game, saying, “I don’t think I would have made Wordle if I had the intention of making it popular if you’re trying to make something.” Don’t try to make Wordle something you’re passionate about, something that’s meaningful to you. Once you create it, everything else will flow from there.