The creator of Wordle became one of Wales’ millionaires when he sold his video game to The New York Times for an unknown seven figures.
Josh Wardle became one of the Welsh millionaires after having created the popular wordle game. Her project began as an act of love for her partner. But his page ended up conquering the internet and The New York Times bought it for more than a million dollars.
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The beginning of the video game It was a gift for his girlfriend because she loves word games. Wordle spread to her family group, which was a rage in their WhatsApp groups because the results were shared among themselves all the time. Its success prompted Josh to launch it on the internet and, in a few days, it went from 90 players to 300 thousand users per day.
Josh Wardle’s professional career
The Welshman was recognized as a software engineer but His professional training was mostly linked to the field of arts.. She studied at Royal Holloway College, London, where she gained a degree in Audiovisual Arts. She later moved to the United States to study a Master of Fine Arts, specializing in Digital Art, at the University of Oregon.
His popularity on the internet began with his artist profile on redditin mid-2011. His place within this social network led him to work for the application as product manager for the community engineering team. In this position created his first games: The Button and The Place. The latter brings together the community from all over Reddit to create a large image through the participation of users, who can add a pixel every 10 minutes.
Wordle, Josh Wardle’s viral video game
wordle game
Your video game is a kind of crossword puzzle, in which You must guess a five-letter word in just six attempts. This application gives clues in case you get a letter right and it is in the correct position. The success of Wordle made The New York Times acquire its license through an unknown figure, it was only known that it amounted to seven figures,
Josh Wardle started this project for his partner, Shah, and titled it with a play on words between his last name and “word”, which means word in English. His girlfriend was an important part of the development of the video game because she tested the first versions of it and reduced her base from 10,000 five-letter words to just 2,500. The criterion used for the selection was that they had to be words of regular use.
The couple took inspiration from Spelling Bee games and The New York Times’ daily crossword puzzle. At the same time, they proposed a model without ads and without notifications. Josh Wardle described: “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day,” he said. “And that’s it. He doesn’t want more of your time than that.”
Although the game started with just one attempt a day, its popularity led many other developers to use Wordle’s foundation to create their own applications. Some of them even have the option of paying a subscription to play an unlimited number of games per day.
