Spelling Bee, too, and Words With Friends. Who knew online word games would get us talking to each other again? Discover how Wordle brought people together through brief yet irresistible daily gameplay. Keep reading to unravel Wordle’s viral formula and cultural significance.
This article describes the phenomenal rise of Wordle, the online word guessing game that became a global phenomenon at the start of 2022. Wordle tapped into peoples’ desire for low-stakes shared experiences during the ongoing pandemic isolation. Even though it’s played individually, Wordle fostered a new type of digital water cooler talk as people shared their results on social media.
The writer highlights how Wordle’s simple but addictive gameplay mechanics and limited sharing features created the perfect conditions for a viral hit. Its design also aligned well withmobile usage trends. The piece examines Wordle through the lens of game theory and interrogates why its constraints made it optimally social and engaging.
While very informative on Wordle’s design and cultural impact, the article could have explored additional factors behind its success like timing, distribution methods and real-world word of mouth. It also engages little with criticisms of Wordle’s potential negative impacts or questions about its long term appeal.
Overall, this provides a fascinating case study of how a minimal yet thoughtfully executed game concept took the world by storm. Both game and web designers can learn from Wordle’s viral recipe of constraints, sharing and perfect mobile snackability.
Table of Contents
- Genres
- Recommendation
- Take-Aways
- Summary
- Once word games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the nature of playing word games changed.
- The social aspect of online word games also changed how designers create them.
- Online word games increasingly appeal to people older than 50.
- About the Author
Genres
Social media, Internet phenomenon, games, mobile apps, viral hits, constraint-based design, sharing features, critical design, cultural impact, game theory, remote connection, pandemic trends.
Recommendation
Multiplayer online word games that you can play on your mobile devices are exploding in popularity and social significance. Analog word games like Crossword puzzles have been in newspapers for nearly 100 years. But when games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the social aspect of word games changed, as Schuyler Velasco reports in Experience magazine. You can play these word games alone, but they don’t have to be solitary pursuits anymore. Now they work as social activities that can bring people together across long distances.
Take-Aways
- Once word games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the nature of playing word games changed.
- The social aspect of online word games also changed how designers create them.
- Online word games increasingly appeal to people older than 50.
Summary
Once word games like Wordle and Spelling Bee became available on smartphone apps, the nature of playing word games changed.
Spelling Bee involves seven letters arranged in a circle with one letter in the middle. The objective is to build as many words as possible, always using the central letter. People tweet passionately about their answers, and such online banter is practically part of the game. This is even more so with Wordle. Created by a Brooklyn software developer, the game gives players six attempts to figure out a five-letter word every day. The New York Times purchased the game from developer Josh Wardle in February 2022, and now millions play. People constantly post their scores and the puzzles trend on social media.
“Wordle might be the most extreme example, but it’s part of an explosion of word games that have flourished on mobile devices, reaching new heights of popularity and cultural relevance.”
Analog word games are hardly new. After all, people have long been obsessed with crossword puzzles. But when word games, such as Scrabble-derivative Words with Friends, became accessible as smartphone apps, they became community activities. People can compete against each other and learn from one another. Word games are especially good at reinforcing a sense of community. Indeed, their social dimension may be as important as solving the puzzle. These games appeal to people’s need to share something positive with others, and since they are easy to use, they enable conversations across distances, both geographic and demographic.
The personal connection Wordle enables is crucial to the game’s success, which soared during the pandemic. Its “share” function allows people to post the process they used to reach a solution. According to Joel Fagliano, The New York Times’ puzzle editor, this personal aspect and people’s ability to share their experiences, is crucial to all the Times’ word games. This feature is very suited to word games. Lots of other types of games, like Sudoku, just aren’t easy to chat about in a personal way.
“You can’t really talk about a Sudoku with someone else. Like, ‘Oh, that nine was crazy’…It doesn’t work that way. Whereas the crossword clues evoke memories, stories, reactions — I hated this, I loved this.” (Joel Fagliano, New York Times puzzle editor)
Game designers set out to make their puzzles “easy to learn, hard to master.” Easy-to-use games are accessible to a far broader range of people, many of whom might not initially be drawn to “multiplayer gaming.” And it helps when they are available on mobile phones. In the past, if you wanted to play a game with other people, you had to park in front of a computer or an elaborate console for hours. Adults with families and jobs don’t have time for that, but if a game is on their phone, they can play it in short bursts.
Online word games increasingly appeal to people older than 50.
Wordle’s broad success changed the gaming industry’s dynamic. Mobile phones, rather than computers and consoles, are increasingly the dominant gaming platform. With that in mind, designers now seek to appeal to a demographic the gaming industry has ignored until now: older people. Those older than 50 are a huge market, and many have both time and money.
“We came up with this idea of replicating the feeling of sitting around a table, playing board games with our family.” (Paul Bettner, co-creator of Words with Friends)
Many popular game designs are now more accessible to older users. For instance, they use larger fonts that are easier to read. Designers are also creating games that aren’t just about “dexterity and reaction speed,” in part because older people’s reaction speed slows. In addition, people older than 50 aren’t into “cheap thrills.” They want games with a payoff that adds a sense of meaning and purpose. Games like Wordle have broad appeal, in part because they can meet people’s emotional needs as well as their need for personal connection and their enjoyment of challenging entertainment.
About the Author
Schuyler Velasco, the former deputy editor of Experience Magazine, is now senior writer at NGN Magazine.
Read the full article at How Wordle brought us back together