Every year brings a number of tentpole releases from big names in the gaming industry that drive the conversation for Game of the Year. FromSoftware’s Elden Ring is a frontrunner for 2022, though titles like Horizon Forbidden West and Pokemon Legends: Arceus have also captured peoples’ attentions. Yet there are often smaller titles that unexpectedly carve out a niche, such as the rise of Among Us in 2020 - two years after it came out. For 2021, Wordle was one of the biggest surprises to shake the industry, and its popularity has lingered.
Wordle is a browser-based word guessing puzzle game created by software engineer Josh Wardle, who originally wanted to create an experience for his partner Palak Shah. After it spread among their friends and family, Wardle gave the game a wide release, at which point it became a sensation with countless people solving daily word puzzles and sharing their results on social media. It grew so prestigious that The New York Times purchased Wordle for seven figures. Grumblings about the potential for a paywall have circulated following other changes, but this would be a mistake.
How Wordle Changed Under The New York Times
Though Wordle took off just recently, its core concept is familiar. It asks players to guess a five-letter word with only six attempts. Each attempt tells players which letters in the word they got correct, and whether those letters are in the proper spot or belong somewhere else. This format was popularized by ventures like the 1987 game show Lingo, but Wordle stands out for its sleek UI, availability to all, and the community building aspects of its social media integration.
After Wordle was purchased, a few changes began to take place. In early February 2022, the game’s “daily streak” tracker reset as the game migrated to a New York Times hosting website. Certain words have been censored from guessing, largely anything considered offensive like ethnic slurs, and fans expressed dismay at what they felt were more esoteric Wordle answers being thrown into the daily rotation.
Yet, one of the biggest developments that cropped up this week was The New York Times requesting a fan-driven “Wordle Archive” service shut itself down. Wordle Archive kept a backlog of puzzles for fans to go back and try whenever they wanted, which was considered a boon for the puzzle game that thrives on its simplicity; offering just one word a day to keep its presentation sleek. Shutting down Wordle-adjacent projects suggests to many that The New York Times hopes to capitalize on its acquisition, possibly to the extent of installing a paywall.
Why a Wordle Paywall Would Be Detrimental
As of this writing, no official announcement has been made to suggest Wordle will be put behind a paywall, but it’s easy to see why fans are concerned. Josh Wardle originally promised Wordle would be free to play and feature no advertisements, but this was when it stood as an independent passion project. The New York Times is a corporation often infamous for locking even its hardest-hitting investigative journalism behind a subscription - arguably necessary to keep the business alive in the modern media climate, but not a popular solution.
There are numerous means of subscribing to The New York Times depending on what audiences are looking for, but the most pertinent to this discussion is its “Games” service that costs $1.25 per-week (in monthly installments) or $40 per-year. Included in this are crossword puzzles, word games, and logic puzzles, as well as a Crossword Archive that may be comparable to an experience like Wordle and the aforementioned fan Wordle Archive.
However, adding Wordle into the New York Times Games service would likely kill its momentum. There are newspaper subscribers who would do their daily Wordle puzzles in the same vein as a crossword, but this would cut the game off from a much larger fanbase that otherwise advertises the experience on social media. It may further perceptions of the word game becoming more “pretentious,” and ultimately there’s a good chance the simple idea won’t be worth a price tag for many. If players just log on for five minutes to complete a puzzle every morning, they’ll likely turn their attention to one of Wordle’s many clones and inspired projects rather than trying to get behind a paywall.
Wordle is available now as a browser game.
