A look into how this game won over the hearts of so many.
When we are constantly talking about things like web3 and the metaverse, what actually has captured the internet’s attention span the past three months has been Wordle — a wonderfully simple web-based word guessing game.
What is Wordle?
If you have been living under a rock the past 3 months then you may not know what on earth we are talking about. So to give those individuals a quick intro into what the game involves : you get six tries to guess a five letter word, and clues tell you when you guess a letter correctly. That’s it. The interface and gamification is minimal; you can’t log in, and you can only play once a day.
Wordle took off in mid-December 2021, and since then millions of people have joined in on playing the game, many sharing their results on Twitter and other social media channels. This fast rise prompted The New York Times to buy Wordle for a number in the “low seven figures.”
Let’s take a look how how Wordle created such a popular web experience and some important lessons we can take away from its success.
1. Tailor-made for a specific audience
Wordle creator Josh Wardle and his girlfriend Palak Shah are big fans of word games, so Josh geared Wordle specifically for Palak. By focusing on such a specific type of word-game fan, Josh kept a clean focus on delight and minimising frustration. After all, there’s nothing more annoying than a crossword clue that leaves you stumped.
2. Simple UX
Wordle is incredibly easy to pick up. You get two types of clues (one for guessing a correct letter, another for guessing a letter in the correct place), and there are only two levels of difficulty. The keyboard embedded on the page keeps track of what letters you’ve guessed, and there’s no need to deal with the sometimes awkward experience of using the default keyboard.
The game is also built with accessibility in mind, offering a high contrast colour mode for colour blind users to play with blue and orange letter blocks instead of the default green-yellow.
There’s no profile to make, no ads or pop-ups, and the game remembers if you have a streak going. By having little for the players to think about regarding the mechanics of the game, Wordle builds instant familiarity and anticipation for the gameplay each day.
3. The game respects people’s time
This piece by Joe Bernstein puts Wordle’s relationship to time perfectly:
“Unlike many of the other aesthetically pleasing, dopamine-boosting apps and games that surround us, Wordle gives us strict limits. We get one word per day, refreshing at midnight local time. Once you’ve consumed your six-or-fewer guesses for the day, that’s it. You’re done until the next midnight rolls around. No infinite scrolling. No incentive to play with new words or improve your score. No freemium model to speed up your wait for the next word. It’s… refreshing.”
By embracing limits, Wordle became a game people kept coming back to.
4. Shareable and discussion inducing
Wordle took off after Josh built a sharing feature, which he added in once he noticed a couple players sharing colour-coded emojis on Twitter to show off their guess history. The sharing feature includes no URL, so this means the game has grown only those deliberately seeking it out. The emoji pattern is eye-catching and naturally prompts players to reach out and discuss their approaches to solving the word of the day. At companies across the world, Slack channels have been set up for people to share their Wordle guesses.
5. Remixable
Almost as instantly as it rose, Wordle attracted copycats. But it also attracted strong defendants, including Apple, which removed Wordle clones seeking to profit from the original’s popularity on the App Store. There were also devotees who created homages to Wordle in other languages, a version that embraced colourful, more explicit language, a geographic version, and even a satirical one-letter version.
While people value the original , many used it as inspiration which ultimately helped draw eyes back to Wordle.
6. Scalable
Wordle is super simple, but it was originally on an independent company server. Once the game went viral, Josh got help from a friend to move it onto Cloudflare and Amazon S3 for hosting. Thanks to modern software, it’s never been easier to create a game on the web.
In summary
It would have been easy for Josh to leverage the popularity of Wordle with venture funding, but this would have meant needing to create growth ambitions and change key aspects of a game that people love.Who knows what the future holds with the New York Times acquisition and how the game changes as a result, but there’s no doubt that Wordle has inspired web creators across the globe to create delightful experiences.