Enlarge / Sometimes, building better Wordles means building the same Wordles... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO—When The New York Times acquired daily puzzle mega-hit Wordle at the beginning of 2022, there were plenty of skeptics who were sure it signaled the end of the game's incredible viral rise. Apparently, those skeptics included some of the people at the Times itself.
At a presentation at the Game Developers Conference Thursday, Times game producer and industry veteran Zoe Bell said the new owners expected Wordle's daily users "would just immediately decline" after the acquisition. Partly that was out of fear that some players would recoil from the "huge corporate behemoth" that now owned the indie hit. But it was also a simple recognition of the usual cycle for viral "zeitgeist" games: "How long can exponential growth go on?"
Just over a year after the acquisition, though, Bell said the company's efforts at "preserving Wordle as an Internet treasure" have paid off. That's thanks in large part to a patient, "first do no harm" strategy that didn't seek to directly monetize the game or introduce a lot of half-baked changes to the game's successful formula, she said.
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