Wordle: the game which had thousands, if not millions of people practically addicted to it. With more and more people using social media during the lockdown, the game saw a sudden rise in popularity around the world. However, there have recently been some issues which have almost shut it down.
During the lockdown, The New York Times bought Wordle. At the time, they were known for having many different fun games on their website, and Wordle seemed like another one to join their collection. However, in early November, the New York Times workers felt as though they were not being paid enough, so they decided to go on strike. Over 600 members of the New York Times decided to participate in the strike. Some time later, the workers started urging fans of these games to stop playing these games and to break their streaks for the sake of the strikes. A few years ago (and still to this day) people were posting frequently about their performance in Wordle. Now, people were posting about how they broke their streak of weeks, months, or in some cases even over a year! Following this, some of the games began to shut down, and for a short period of time people were unsure about whether or not Wordle was going to re-open or not.
Today, however, the workers were able to come to a fair conclusion with the New York Times and the games on the website are now all running smoothly.
This incident was very disappointing for many people, and this game could even have been linked to people’s memories of the lockdown – the highs of a very drastic time.
However, even if Wordle had closed, there would have been some good things coming out of it. For example, the strikers were able to express themselves in a really creative manner: apart from convincing people to join their boycott and break their streaks, they also created new games on a separate website. These games were essentially the exact same of what was usually featured on the New York Times website, but with a twist – all of these new games had something to do with strikes. For example, Strikle, where you had to guess a word related to strikes. Or Connections – strike edition, in which you make connections relating to various words used at the picket fence.
Additionally, after seeing Wordle’s success, there were many websites that started, each ending in “le” with similar concepts. Some examples of these are globle, worldle, foodle, and many more. These are also enjoyed by people around the world today!
It’s great to see that the issues the tech guild had with the New York Times regarding unfair pay were resolved, but it was also amazing to see this creative means of expression, all of which was inspired from a simple game where you have to guess a random word.
