Apparently they spent "low seven figures" on it.

Does this mean that the Times is going to launch its own console full of infomatic and crosswords puzzle games? Will we finally get a Paul Krugman FPS? What's next in the feeding frenzy?

Seriously, though, this makes a lot of sense in terms of audience overlap with the Times' big crosswords business. It's just interesting to see media companies that you don't normally think of being in the gaming space making moves. Games truly are everywhere.

Interesting. Well the developer who made Wordle was inspired by Spelling Bee from the Times so there is some overlap.

The idea that they spent 7 figures for it is a bit unbelievable though. It's not like a crossword puzzle or Sudoku where you can print it on the newspaper or a book. I have no idea how they are going to recoup that investment, they are probably paying for the trademark so anyone who tries to integrate Wordle into something will have to pay licensing and royalties.

@yyninja: While the NY Times has seen substantial subscriber growth in the past three years and change as more and more people lose faith in their local papers but still crave some source of news, a lot of their profit is driven by the Crossword, NYT Cooking, Wirecutter referral links, Spelling Bee and now, I'm sure, however they sell the hell out of Wordle. Keep in mind that they also recently acquired The Athletic to greatly expand their reach in sports.

They also have one of the stronger and most consistently growing podcast networks that can be a bit easy to overlook: The Daily, Ezra Klein Show, Sway and The Argument are their flagships, but they release several articles in audio form as well, have a quite interesting and diverse music podcast in Popcast (despite its name, they'll deep dive new age revival music one week, TikTok trends the next and deep dive Tunnel culture of DMX-era hip-hop the next), keep their glasses lens cleaner nearby by hosting one of the very few prestige book review podcasts, cover queer perspectives via Modern Love and Still Processing, plus all their special event podcasts that generate tons of chatter (even if they've gotten into hot water with situations like the Caliphate pod).

The app version of the paper is, honestly, one of the smoothest and smartest looking apps I've ever seen, made even wilder by the way it seamlessly integrates into your entire phone experience in a way even huge social platforms like Instagram struggle with by still loading a webpage that interrupts with a "load in the app?" pop up.

It's still really easy to think of the NY Times as the same Old Grey Lady, but it's actually quickly become one of the more nimble, cash-rich and quick to act media organizations going. It honestly reminds me of the shift that happened at Apple during Steve Jobs' second stint, where it's become more about branding the Times as a space you want to hang out at and be associated with as much as it is a product that simply hopes to provide value for fees.

@yyninja: There are so many ways they can monetize this. First they can just add advertisements to it. Second they can require a free NYT login for it (getting people to create logins is valuable marketing information.) They can make the app link to the Times when it posts to social media, they can put it into a bigger NYT application, they can just make ads for their own content and other apps in the app non-intrusively. Premium version of the app for a buck with some extra features.

Anything with millions of users and lots of visibility is potentially worth a lot of money even if you're not aggressive with it. A couple million is not a huge payout for a lot of eyeballs and the Times has a lot of ways to turn eyeballs into cash.

I suspect Wordle is very much a case of valuable until purchased.

@nodima said:

Hah, you got me there. I always viewed the NY Times more as a traditional newspaper than a digital media outlet, but you're right they are making moves to undergo a complete transformation.

I guess my sentiment is that the money could have been better invested in helping tell the news rather than shell out millions for a trendy game.

@yyninja: I know you probably mean directly spend that money making great news articles. But if they use it right they can absolutely use Wordle to help tell the news, and make money and keep writing good news articles. If they keep it free, but around the game is NYT articles talking about big topics of today, more people are going to see the news, and potentially pay NYT a few bucks to read those articles and keep making news.

I don't think most people these days watch or read the real news. They would rather watch a Steven Colbert or John Oliver, who talk about what is going on, and keep it entertaining, but are not the straight facts news. So just getting people to look at your actual news these days im sure is a massive pain in the ass worth spending the millions to do so.

@nodima: This is a really informative post that contextualizes this. Thank you for the info.

To me what's really interesting is the fact that Quordle (a Wordle variant) was acquired by Merriam-Webster and then Britannica bought Octordle (which again is another wordle variation).

The competition to get a slice of the pie (in this case traffic) looks to be fierce!