The DeanBeat: Wordle creator’s inspirational talk was a joy to hear at GDC
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Josh Wardle got a very nice round of applause at the Game Developers Conference when he said that he designed Wordle without giving a thought to monetization. He also triggered a thing that has been all too rare during the pandemic: a room filled with game developers laughing and smiling.
Wordle has been one of the rare sensations of gaming, as it was built by a single developer and has been played by millions of people since Wardle made it public in October 2021. The title had no monetization, but it went viral after Wardle made it possible to share daily results as emoji squares on Twitter.
Plenty of clones have appeared on mobile stores to steal some of Wordle’s thunder, but Wardle was able to cash in for a seven-figure payment when The New York Times Company bought Wordle in January. Not bad for a software engineer and artist who made the game for his partner. It was one of the fairy tales of the game industry, like the stories around the creation of games like Flappy Bird, Threes, Stardew Valley, and more.
“I think of myself as an artist. Running things is not interesting to me,” he said. “But the flip side of this is I didn’t want to monetize the game. Other people are totally fine monetizing the game. I didn’t want to make money from the game. This is probably the best possible outcome.”
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