The Death of Wordle
reeshill.net> But I resent that we live in a system where any independent creativity is exploited for financial gain.
So what's the alternative system? One in which creators of delightful projects like Wordle are prevented somehow from making money from their creations? That seems weird and bad.
Your counterpoint is a disingenuous strawman.
The opposite of corporate exploitation is not necessarily ‘no exploitation’ but more like a donation or microfinance type model, something where the owner sells directly to a consumer to exploit their production.
Did the creator sell to NYT because it was in line with their moral principles? Or was it more pragmatic due to living in a system where corporate exploitation is explicitly state sanctioned and therefore controls the majority of financial power?
I think one of the major remaining organizations that actually pays real journalists bought a word game their readers will enjoy and help keep their eyeballs on the drier but more important material, and compensated the creator with a life changing amount of money. Everyone wins.
He sold to NYT because they paid him a million dollars.
And good for him. In less than a year, the fad will have passed and wordle will have 10% the users it has now. And lol at the idea that those users donations would have ever amounted to anything. Not to mention the hassle of accepting them.
Also, wordle fits perfectly with the rest of NYT’s puzzle games. Honestly, if I made wordle, I’d be honored to have my game land there, aside from the cool million(s).
Yeah, he sold it for a princely sum to one of the only companies that successfully charges a subscription for word games. Really could not have gone better for all involved.
I agree, Quizup[1] anyone?
> As of May 2014, QuizUp had 20 million users and had raised over $26 million from venture capital investments.
I think these type of Trivia games have just one option, Cash it at the peak of the fad or wait till it gets replaced by another fad.
Considering NYT has dedicated subscribers for it's puzzle games, I think getting Wordle in it is a smart choice and perhaps may be they could turn it around profitably; Even if they don't I'm happy for Josh Wardle.
We need more such successful indie exit stories like this, When there's someone to buy Facebook's Liberapay and IBM's Watson then we need not be too critical about acquisition of a product loved by millions.
He has apparently said [1] that he invented Wordle after really getting into the NYT's Spelling Bee game.
So it makes sense for that to be it's new home. I'm disappointed I may have to start paying for it, but it's given me a lot of fun.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/wordle-new-yo...
Hear, hear. I'd pay $0.25/year to the original designer to play Wordle.
Nice demonstration of how pointless it would have been to attempt to monetize wordle.
Right? I don't mean to rail against the commenter but are they being serious? Wordle is valuable enough to charge at least $1/mo per user. I'd personally say $2/mo to mitigate payment processor fees.
P.S. This is assuming the user base comprises avid daily players (which seems true.) They would definitely get their money's worth.
How about $0.01 every time you play it?
So up to $3.65 / year for avid users.
> now millions play the game daily
So a multiple of $3.65m a year! Payday without any need for third party motivations creeping in.
This would be an ideal support method for a lot of websites, if there was a system which made it practical to transfer small amounts of money with no more hassle than the “<website> wants to accesss <api>” browser prompts…
Heck, we’re already dealing with cookie prompts all over the web; if adding a “$0.01 per article” prompt means we can get rid of the ads and thus get rid of the cookie prompt, it’s not even a net loss for usability
Where everyone can make such delightful inventions and not feel compelled by large actors to sell them.
People like creating, inventing, playing, when they are secure and happy. Most people don’t live in that state though.
Whenever I make a small project I live in fear that the NYT will threaten to give me a million dollars for it.
People are also happy when they receive life changing amounts of money for their creative work. He made "low seven figures." I think he's feeling fine.
He’d feel more fine if he felt he couldn’t be compelled to sell :)
What compulsion? The desire to be made for life?
Yep, that you didn’t need to live in a state of hoping you’d be “made for life”
Ah, well if we're talking about living in a post scarcity world where those incentives simply don't exist, I'm with you!
Not sure how we get there though.
He made the game just for his partner. So there's no block on people making and sharing things for fun. It's just what he did.
The fact it became really popular and he could then be financially rewarded for something he did anyway is just the icing on the cake.
I agree with this. I'd love to live in a world where our basic living needs (housing, food, clothing, healthcare, etc.) are met, and so every person feels safe and comfortable exploring play and creativity to the extent they desire.
Is this aspirational and unrealistic? Absolutely! I'm not claiming this is something we can do today, but I think it's good to think about where we might like to go.
I already live in this world. I do some work for other people for a few hours a day, and in exchange I have housing, food, clothing, healthcare, etc.
Oh, were these things supposed to materialize for me for free with no effort on my part? Well, I suppose there's always prison, but I'd rather not.
The alternative in a capitalist system is something like the NEA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Art...
The OP can also lament something without there being an alternative.
An NEA alternative won't change that way more people will want to do it than will be needed to do it.
And UBI is the answer to that.
easy microtransactions where the creator could have earned money without the need to sell out to NYT
The reports of WORDLE's death are greatly exaggerated. Whatever, NYT bought a game. Who was going to still be playing in a year? Who was going to be playing till it was done with the scheduled run? I promise you it's increasingly small fractions of the current player base in the hypothetical no sale world. Change is as constant as the sea, the magic would've died out in a few months regardless. Rehost/stop playing/move on.
The current Wordle will live on in 1000 private copies. It's self-contained in a HTML and a JS file with no server requirement other that file hosting.
I considered mentioning this in the post but I wanted to keep it short and sweet.
Yeah, Wordle itself is not that complicated, and as you said, other than serving the HTML and JS it requires no server-side processing. I'm definitely going to download the HTML and JS and rehost it, at least just for myself privately.
To me, that's further reason why the Wordle purchase is sad. NYT is essentially buying some HTML, CSS, JS… and a playerbase. Rather than competing by improving their existing puzzles and/or creating new ones, they're just buying out the competition.
Even though technically-minded people like you and me will be able to re-host Wordle quite easily, the general public who lack those skills will still eventually lose access to the original independent Wordle.
> Rather than competing by improving their existing puzzles and/or creating new ones, they're just buying out the competition.
The purchase of the game, for apparently "low seven digits", is going to spur tens of thousands of programmers to try to build the next Wordle. To try to capture some of that magic. That's how it works. There is absolutely nothing sad about this. And really the social magic of Wordle is retreating, so it's not like you were going to be anxiously playing your daily Wordle in six months.
NYT basically bought some hype and legitimacy. They seem flush with cash right now (didn't TFG say they were failed or something?), and seem to be massively overpaying for lots of things. They want to make people think of their games, so there you have it. Congrats to Wardle.
> Rather than competing by improving their existing puzzles and/or creating new ones, they're just buying out the competition.
If this was a small business, I think I'd agree, but this was a fun side project by someone. If anything, it's a great payout for their side project that they may have never intended to monetize anyway, without breaking it for existing or future users (if they keep their promise of keeping it free and open).
> if they keep their promise of keeping it free and open
There is no "promise" other than "initially free", which almost certainly guarantees it will soon be hosted on NYT and require their subscription to play.
I'd imagine the Venn diagram of people who will still be playing Wordle in a year and people who already pay for NYT Crossword/Spelling Bee/etc is... just a circle.
These days when I find a really great online service I hope it doesn’t get too popular because a buy-out and monetisation is sure to follow.
I’m happy for the developers but wish it wasn’t necessary.
After some bad luck I've become a local and self-hosted enthusiast for the same reason.
Above all else, the creator deserves a seven figure pay day. I'm extremely happy for him. Everyone bringing value to the world deserves this outcome, we just don't all get to see it. (More often than not, our open source code just gets co-opted and we get a "thanks".)
In opposition to the platforms, we can create or play one of the million clones. Even non technical folks can find these.
> "the general public who lack those skills will still eventually lose access to the original independent Wordle."
The original one, yes.
Paul Lutus[1] has made "Word Game" an open source Wordle clone on his website: https://arachnoid.com/wordgame/
Mobile friendly view: https://arachnoid.com/wordgame/mobile-display.html ; Announcement thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/wordle/comments/s69nma/word_game/ .
Oh no! How dare the author of something that millions of people have enjoyed earn one penny from his work! And it's definitely dead now that it might only be available to one of the most successful publications on the planet! /s
> This is not to say that I have any animosity towards the game’s creator. Given such a large price tag, it’s hard to imagine not accepting a buyout offer. But I resent that we live in a system where any independent creativity is exploited for financial gain.
That's sort of the trade, isn't it? If independent creativity is regularly exploited for profit, that means people are always incentivized to create more. Would they really create as much in a system that offered few or no incentives?
I've been playing Wordle religiously for the past 21 days and I'm nothing but happy that the creator was able to get a life-changing amount of money for this very fun game that he generously shared with the world for free.
Extrapolating this to "all creativity is exploited for financial gain" is silly. There are millions of websites full of independent creativity that are not being exploited for financial gain, mostly because there's no opportunity to do so.
This vision of a world where artists work only for the pure love of making art without considerations of money doesn't exist. It never existed. Artists gotta eat too.
And let's get real for a moment here. It's not War and Peace or Beethoven's 5th Symphony or something. It's a very slick version of hangman with an extremely clever virality mechanism. If it goes behind a paywall it will be a mild annoyance at best before people move on to something else. It's probably going to die down anyway as the fad passes.
NYT bought the NFT of Wordle!
This acquisition will forever be remembered as the best example of how NFTs work.
They didn't buy the copyright, the source code or any assets, but the de-facto distributed knowledge that they acquired the right to be considered the Wordle Owners.