Viral online game Wordle will stay ad-free, no mobile version planned

Daniel Sims

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In a nutshell: The creator of the recent viral hit game Wordle has made it clear he doesn’t intend to monetize the game, and doesn’t want it to dominate players’ time the way other successful games might try to.

Josh Wardle told BBC Radio 4 this week that he wants to keep his game simple and never intended for it to get as successful as it has. The BBC says Wordle has attracted the attention of hundreds of thousands in just three months.

If you’ve seen people tweeting seemingly random blocks of black, yellow, and green squares, those are their Wordle scores.

Wordle is a bit like a daily crossword mixed with hangman. Players have six chances to guess the word of the day, but the game offers clues if players guess the right letter in the wrong or right place.

Right now it’s only available through browsers (desktop or mobile), and Wardle doesn’t intend to make a native mobile version (though similar games can be found on Apple’s app store).

Wardle expressed suspicion of mobile games that demand users’ attention with things like push notifications. He said he doesn’t want Wordle to grab players’ attention for any more than the few minutes they might take to guess each word of the day. Wordle also has no ads, and Wardle said he isn’t doing anything with players’ data.

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This is what I don't understand; if you DON'T want to monopolize users' attention, that's why you SHOULD have a mobile game. This way people can play your game done right instead of playing clones that take full advantage of users' attention. The maker of Flappy Bird didn't understand this and caused all sorts of sh*tty clones to spawn.
 
This is what the LINGO game show on GSN was. 2 and 2... Chuck Woolery and the fabulous, funny Shandi Finnessey.
 
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