Six Lessons From the Success of Wordle

Living as we do in a capitalist society, it’s easy to assume the only reason people would engage in creative labour is for profit. But the world of culture doesn’t work that way. It’s always been full of creators who are

1. astonishingly productive and
2. propelled by desires other than money.

The sheer uncommerciality of the venture is weirdly refreshing. It stands in total contrast to the just-add-water hucksterism of today’s influencers and tech firms, who are constantly trying to shove sponsorships into their work or shake their audience upside down to see what loose change rattles out.

When we’re creating things, it’s normal to start worrying about how our audience will react. All those different people, with different aesthetics! Some of them are gonna love this part of what you’re doing, but hate this other part. Worrying about this can lead you into a rathole of self-censorship, where you try to satisfy everyone and wind up satisfying no one.

Wardle was making his game for just one person. When you’re in a mental dialogue with a single person, your creative decisions are sharpened.

It’s frequently very valuable to pay attention how your audience is interacting with your work. They see things you don’t, and come up with ideas you can’t. In the early days of Twitter, it was clever users who invented the retweet and the at-reply. To their credit, Twitter’s engineers spotted the behavior and adopted them as native features, and they helped catalyze Twitter’s explosive growth.

Anyone can play Wordle, in any browser. You don’t need to create an account or log in. You don’t need an app store. Wardle avoided every single digital walled garden, and instead went with the most wide-open field available: The web.

People are especially enthusiastic about things they can share without having to go through an App Store, or without being bogged down by having lots of their data captured during the experience.

Wordle offers up only one new word everyday. That’s it. Once you’ve solved the day’s word, you…stop playing. You go do other stuff, like your job or hanging out with your loved ones. Sure, you might hanker to play more Wordle, but you can’t. You gotta wait until tomorrow.

Unlike nearly all social media (and most video games), Wordle is not trying to get you narcotically addicted to reopening the app again and again, all day long, in an eye-glazed trance.