Joseph Rueter: [00:00:00] Yeah. And along the way on the arbitrage, did you try to buy other games? Cause we're winding up to this wordle impact for us. What between the first two games. And the wordle story happened.
Aaron Kardell: Yeah. So throughout the 2010s.
Nate Kadlac: Welcome to the Hey, Good Game podcast, where we chat with the creators of your favorite games that you secretly play in the cracks
Joseph Rueter: of your day. I'm Joseph Reuter, and I'm here with my co hosts, Aaron Cardell and Nate Cadillac, where we typically speak with game creators and experts about their stories.
Joseph Rueter: Today, we turn the lens on our co founder, Aaron. And games and his adventures in games. We're about 20 episodes into our podcast and one of the games. That continues to come up over and over and [00:01:00] over is Wordle. We could be talking about music, AI, kids and gaming, how it impacts our brains. And this game continues to weave itself into our conversations.
Joseph Rueter: And it turns out we have our own Wordle story. So, a little bit about Wordle, if you haven't heard of this thing. Wordle's a web based daily game about one single word. It's created and developed by a Welsh software engineer, Josh Wardle. Players have six attempts to guess what is this five letter word, and feedback is given on each of the tiles in a colored format.
Joseph Rueter: that indicates whether or not you're right or not about those letters in that position. Wordle has just one solution each day, and the players for that day attempt the same word. So during 2023, Wordle has been played 4. 8 [00:02:00] billion times on our estimates. It's become a cultural touchpoint, it's written into TV episodes, and it's referenced continually, not only on our podcast.
Joseph Rueter: So Aaron, before we get into the wordle side of things, you were maybe the first of all of us to build a game. What drew you down that path?
Aaron Kardell: Yeah,
Joseph Rueter: the
Aaron Kardell: first game that I built commercially Was not originally intended to be commercialized. One of the Hey, good game properties, KukuroConquest. com is right now the most popular website out there for playing Kukuro and really what inspired that you go back to the mid 2000s, there was pretty big Sudoku craze.
Aaron Kardell: Everybody was playing Sudoku, and this was a time where people would actually go to bookstores and hang out, and near [00:03:00] my house, could walk to a Borders bookstore, if anybody remembers what that actually was, and along with the stack of books of all of these Sudoku puzzles, there was just some other offshoot puzzles, and Kokuro was one of them.
Aaron Kardell: And I had really taken to Sudoku, one of the sites at the time that had kind of popularized that was, websudoku. com. And as I'm looking at, at these borders books and some of these other games, I was like, well, I bet I could make online version of Kukuro. This looks like a fun game and it just kind of hit at a time for me where I had just invested like five years in a prior startup and I just wanted to do something fun.
Aaron Kardell: I wanted to build something fun and so I made my online version of Kukuro. No intent to monetize initially, I just wanted to see if I could do it. [00:04:00] And That's what got me started down that path.
Joseph Rueter: Super fascinating to think about Sudoku driving. That was a craze. I had books. Little pen, you know, when I graduated from the pencil to the pen, I knew I was, I was getting better at seeing the patterns.
Joseph Rueter: Right? How once you put Kokoro up, how'd it go?
Aaron Kardell: You know, I just put it up on a web host. Didn't really think much of it. You know, there were really two aspects of that. I made a puzzle generator that would actually generate the puzzles and then I made the puzzle player, which was the online player. And really just kind of got it up and I was 2006 2007 that the first iteration of that was up.
Aaron Kardell: I would say over the next two ish years or so, it kind of quickly shot up to consistent number two in the Google search results if you're searching [00:05:00] for Kikuro. And so, kind of got a steady following. And, Like I said, I never initially intended to monetize, but what kind of altered my thinking on that was later in 2007, I actually built another game, which couldn't get off the conquest theme called that one world conquest and what world conquest was basically a slight knockoff of the risk board game.
Aaron Kardell: But on Facebook, and so you could play on Facebook, against your friends risk. And I immediately put on ads on that cause that attracted quite a following pretty quickly. I actually ended up selling that four months after I built it SGN, but it was sort of out of that experience. Like, Oh. I guess there is some money to be made on ads.
Aaron Kardell: And it was only after kind of going through that experience, selling it, that I later came back to putting some ads on Kokoro [00:06:00] Conquest. But yeah, it was just a slow and steady build over time.
Nate Kadlac: I've always wondered about the conquest theme. Was that chosen just because it was an available domain name? Like, how did that come about?
Aaron Kardell: Good question. I have no idea. World Conquest as a risk knockoff makes way more sense than Kokoro Conquest. I think, probably had a thesaurus out someday and was just like, what are things that could go after Kokoro and still be a, a dot com. It's stuck.
Nate Kadlac: So you, you sold your other game at that point, decided to put ads on Kokoro Conquest.
Nate Kadlac: And how did that go? I mean, advertising back in the late 2000s was a completely different, different game to play. I'm curious, like how advertising in the late 2000s is different from today. And what did you learn from that experience?
Aaron Kardell: Well, I think there were things to learn both on. Buying ad traffic or buying traffic through ads and having [00:07:00] traffic on your site.
Aaron Kardell: So back to the other game for a minute. One of the ways that I quickly grew the audience for the world conquest game on Facebook was actually buying Facebook ads. And it's insane to think about this today, but back then, like you could for anywhere from one to two. 10 cents a click, get people to your Facebook game.
Aaron Kardell: And so like there was this arbitrage, like you could literally get people to your game cheaper than you were monetizing them on, on the other side. While it's theoretically possible to do that today, we're just in a very different environment. It's very, Competitive. It's super hard. There's so many data scientists today, like the idea of buying traffic to have a positive arbitrage on a game today is just, it's night and day different.
Aaron Kardell: The other thing is, you know, I think back then for most games, or at least most people in my [00:08:00] position, it was really like he had one option and it was AdSense. And. Bulk of the AdSense traffic was really like text ads. You would maybe see occasionally like a display ad come in, but it was so much. Here are your three text links right alongside your game.
Aaron Kardell: And that was kind of the bread and butter of what Google was doing at the time. And it, it just kind of evolved over time from there to have these days, like we get emailed all the time by ad providers wanting to work with us on our ad strategy and just a lot of other options that are kind of more open to small to mid sized game creators that weren't available then.
Joseph Rueter: So you're making games somewhere along the line. You put in like a contact us form. Right. And people started whipping emails at you. You're like, Oh, take the form down. Like what keeps you engaged in games outside of [00:09:00] like the puzzle? I heard at the beginning, the, I wonder if I could do this. Oh, I can do this.
Joseph Rueter: I wonder if I can do this again. Oh, I can buy traffic and make money. What's the step after that, that keeps the flywheel going here in your brain?
Aaron Kardell: Yeah, I think it's multifaceted. I think it's fun. It's relatable. It's fun to build something that your family and friends and others can play. And so there was a whole lot of family risk games back in the day when I had built that game.
Aaron Kardell: I think just the communal element, you know, building something that others can It's a lot more fun than some of the other. B2B style endeavors that, that I've been on. But I think there's also a side to it where it's just interesting from a business perspective. And I think we kind of have heard some of this from some of the guests that we've had too, probably most notably like Richard Mann with Nerdle.
Aaron Kardell: There's a guy [00:10:00] who's been part of many B2B. Things over the years, he's like, this is so much different dynamic with the player is very different. They're getting a free product, you know, they might complain from time to time, but it's just you sort of can take more of a mentality of I'm going to prioritize what's important to me and also the fact Holger said on a early podcast, like, I just get a deposit every month because people came and played my game and it's such a different dynamic than, I think anything else I've been involved in business that it's compelling, both from the making something that you resonate with personally and also just from a business model perspective, it's pretty intriguing.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah. And along the way on the arbitrage, did you try to buy other games? Yes. Cause we're winding up to this Wordle impact [00:11:00] for us. Yeah. What between the first two games and, and the Wordle story happened?
Aaron Kardell: Yeah. So throughout the 2010s, you know, I had another startup I built, had nothing to do with games.
Aaron Kardell: First three years of that startup, I didn't take a salary. And so I was supplementing that with other income on the side, sometimes consulting, a little bit of this game revenue. And I think what became clear to me by like 2012 is it wasn't a full salary replacement, the Kuro income. But it was steady income and it was reliable income and it actually helped me personally fund a lot of that other startup experience over time.
Aaron Kardell: And so that, that was when I began to build up a little bit of a thesis of, boy, it'd be nice to just own some more of these properties and. That's really kind of when I started down this journey of like, I'd really like to [00:12:00] buy more of these games as a developer, a creator myself, there's always like, Oh, I could build more, but kind of had a core focus on my primary startup, so I didn't feel like I could invest a ton of time and just thinking up the next game.
Aaron Kardell: So I really started thinking about, well, what, what games could I go acquire? And so I've had quite a few outreaches over the last. 12 years or so, but one of the first ones I, I went back to was because I had so much respect for web Sudoku. com, you know, just trying to reach out to Gideon over there to investigate a potential sale of that property.
Aaron Kardell: You know, I think he was pretty happy with how it was going. We exchanged a few back and forth pleasantries over time, but just never quite went anywhere. Fast forward to January of 22. That's really when I saw Wordle taking off in a big way and immediately [00:13:00] knew, like, I have to make a run at this. And coincidentally, it was just sort of perfect storm of timing.
Aaron Kardell: I had sold kind of my primary startup that I had been working on in, mid 21. So while I was still kind of a little bit occupied, like post sale with some of it, like I had a little bit more capacity, I had a little bit more cash. And so there was more of a, like, I should really take a run at seeing if I can buy Wordle.
Nate Kadlac: So to give context, Josh Wordle launches Wordle in October of 2021. It really takes off in popularity in November. I think even early December when he kind of adds in the social sharing aspect. And so between the three months. That game takes off and when do you send, what are you thinking like in that time, like that moment where you want to reach out [00:14:00] to Josh to see if there's like some opportunity here, what's kind of what's going on in your head in this space and time?
Aaron Kardell: Yeah, I think there was probably a moment in late December around the holidays, maybe, you know, very first part of January 22, where I've been a pretty active Twitter user for a long time, maybe a little less these days. But you just started to notice like on Twitter, on the moments I was on Facebook, like all of these shares of people sharing their scores and you could just see something taking off and then.
Aaron Kardell: Me playing the game, there was just kind of a, a delightful experience of, this is a really well thought out game. And it seems like there's something really unique here. So it was kind of noticing those things. And then, you know, I think I had spent a little bit of the prior summer building up a database of like hundreds and, you know, now in the thousands of [00:15:00] games that.
Aaron Kardell: I might wanna potentially go by, you know, I built up some techniques about looking at traffic on SimilarWeb and, and just some different things. So, you know, I kind of immediately go look at, well, how's it, how's this game really doing? And you start to see like, oh my goodness, this is just like taking off in a huge way.
Aaron Kardell: Unheard of numbers, like on, on anything that I had seen before. And so it was, I dug up a bunch of records before we recorded. This was a Saturday, January 8th, that I had two bits of outreach that day. First was I called a domain broker who owned or represented the owner of. golfwardle. com, the domain name.
Aaron Kardell: And the second outreach was directly to Josh Wardle. And if you're wondering why I did both of those on the same day, it was really, so a lot of people may not remember this at this point, cause it's now at NewYorkTimes. com, [00:16:00] but it Wordle, at the time, was hosted on Josh's personal website, which was like powerlanguage.
Aaron Kardell: co. uk. And I just, I knew that was probably like a personal domain name he probably wouldn't want to part with. I also just didn't think it was a really great long term home for the game. So I was already like trying to think a few steps ahead. Like if Josh is actually willing to sell me this, I'm going to need a different place to host this and I'm going to front run this and get in front of like buying wordle.
Aaron Kardell: com as the new home for this. So I want to already have that worked out if Josh is really willing to sell to me. So that was kind of what kicked it all off.
Nate Kadlac: And you have to think in Josh's mind when he, you know, he launched this game in October the year before, like sitting on his personal website, not expecting anything.
Nate Kadlac: So what happens next after that, you send out an email to Josh, and then you send [00:17:00] out an email to the broker. When you send to the broker first, it sounds like, did you make an offer on the.
Nate Kadlac: com at that point?
Aaron Kardell: So I've got some email records. A lot of it was in phone conversation, but you know, I think what the domain broker came back with was, I probably came in with what I would have considered a low ball offer for the domain name, which was probably low five figures. And I think he kind of came back over the phone while the seller of the domain name is thinking, low six figures.
Aaron Kardell: For the domain name. And so I kind of was slow playing the domain acquisition because along the way, like I actually had zero intent. There were a lot of wordle knockoffs happening around this time, but I just, it didn't seem right to me. It would have been very easy for me as a developer to create a wordle knockoff to buy wordle.
Aaron Kardell: com and to host my own wordle game there. But there was just something about that where. That felt like stealing to me. Like [00:18:00] I didn't think that was right. And so the, the play was always like I needed these to happen together in sequence. So I slow playing the domain acquisition and, but I did go back at one point and I offered a 60 K and it, it sounded like we were getting close to a, a point of Maybe being able to settle on a number for the domain name, but also looking back at this, like I had several outreaches to Josh, some by email, some by Twitter DM over a multi week period here.
Aaron Kardell: And, and unfortunately I just never got a response from Josh. And if you. Fast forward the clock, knowing what I know now, like it was announced on January 31st that he sold it. We pride ourselves at A Good Game on, like, we want to be able to close fast on acquisitions, and you know, we can sometimes often pull these together in [00:19:00] two to three weeks.
Aaron Kardell: But with any big company like that, I got to assume, like, he was probably already under a letter of intent. He was probably had a no shop clause that he wouldn't have been allowed to engage with me in a conversation, quite frankly. So, Josh, if you ever listen to this, I'm a little less offended now that he didn't reply to me.
Aaron Kardell: but I was really ramping it. Like, I was just trying to get him to bite on anything. And so, some of the techniques that I, I tried, like, I found a charity that he was really compelled with and interested in. And I donated a non trivial amount of money to that charity and sent him a note and said, like, hey, like, you inspired me.
Aaron Kardell: And I, I donated to this charity that you like. And by the way, like if we work something out, I, I could probably donate 20 percent of the, any future profits to that charity or, or another one, pick another one. Like we'll, we'll figure it out together. And on January [00:20:00] 16th, I did. This is probably the biggest thing I regret in all of this, but again, he was probably under a letter of intent, like, I had no information, and I just sent him basically, Hey, just so you know I'm serious, like, I'll offer you 300k for this.
Aaron Kardell: Which, in retrospect, like, feels laughable. It was published later that the New York Times paid low seven figures for it. The reality is I could have gotten to a low seven figures number on this. If there had been a little bit of open dialogue with Josh to actually have some insight into the analytics, but I just, I wanted him to know I was serious.
Aaron Kardell: Wanted him to know there was something attached and, and it was hard. At the time I had a bunch of texts with Joseph. I was just trying to figure out like, is this, is this a fad? Is this going away? Or is this the bit like, how high should I be going on [00:21:00] this offer? And like really trying to figure out. Does this have staying power?
Aaron Kardell: And that's, that's kind of one of the things that it's really easy to regret, like not offering more at this point, but that was really the big thing at the time. Like, is this going to stick around? I just was really wrestling with that.
Joseph Rueter: In all the exchanges, Jimmy Fallon plays Wirtle on his TV show. And it just keeps amping, right?
Aaron Kardell: Totally. Looking back at it, that was January 13th that, it was on The Tonight Show. And so, I'll always be able to say, like, Josh, I reached out to you five days before that happened. Like, I knew this was a big deal.
Joseph Rueter: But Well, Jimmy and his producers probably reached out two weeks before that. It's like Yeah.
Joseph Rueter: Totally. And then do we have record here that on February 24th, you sent some other email that said you're not interested.
Aaron Kardell: I finally closed the loop with the [00:22:00] domain broker at that point that I wasn't going to buy wordle. com, just the domain name.
Nate Kadlac: What's curious is on January 31st is when the New York Times announced that they've acquired Wordle.
Nate Kadlac: You get an email back from the broker. If they found out, I'm curious, they're probably like, hey, do you want to buy this? Probably even more now. I don't know. But you didn't respond until a month later. I'm curious, like what you really had those two things as, as a complete kind of unit, were you at all thinking like, maybe this might still be a interesting opportunity to just get the.
Nate Kadlac: com anyways?
Aaron Kardell: I briefly entertained it. And, you know, certainly at that point, it wasn't about. Like, Oh, I'll, I'll put my own game up at world. com. I was, did have a moment of boy, I wonder if I bought that for 60 K if I could get the New York times to pay 250 K just for the domain name later, but I don't know.
Aaron Kardell: Like. Could just assume, like thinking down the road, I'm pretty small in the [00:23:00] scheme of things, and the New York Times has probably a pretty robust legal team and I'm not gonna chance it on a 50 to 100k domain purchase in hopes that The New York Times isn't going to sue me and it's just going to pay me for the domain name later.
Aaron Kardell: So it wasn't ever like seriously entertained, but I did think about it for a little bit.
Joseph Rueter: It's just a war of retainer versus hourly, right? You're just setting yourself up for it.
Nate Kadlac: Do you think they've been a good caretaker of the game? Do you think maybe he, in another reality, he doesn't sell? Do you think the game maintains its popularity?
Nate Kadlac: Goes down? Like how has this played out in your mind?
Aaron Kardell: well, that's a loaded question in some regards. I would have taken it a few different directions, but ultimately I think there's a lot of similarities to, I probably, if you look at like the trajectory that, Some of the other more direct offshoots like [00:24:00] Quirtle and Octurtle and some of those other games have taken, you know, I think this notion of a practice mode or like you can kind of play more than once a day, I probably would have introduced a concept like that.
Aaron Kardell: But I think what the, and in some respects, like that's the fact that there's, there's predominantly the daily on Wordle today and not sort of that practice mode. It's, it's probably more in line with like. Josh's original intent, and probably also just kind of has more of a staying power that way too, I would imagine.
Aaron Kardell: I think what the New York Times has done, just a remarkable job that I don't think would have been as easily predicted back in, 2022 when they bought this was just the other games that they've spun up that they've really built an ecosystem of just really awesome games that people go back to daily. [00:25:00] And starting with Spelling Bee and then, you know, Going into connections and now strands and some of these others, like I think they've done an incredible job in that way.
Aaron Kardell: And I think that, you know, aligns with a lot of what we're trying to do today at, Hey, good game. We want to have a portfolio of fun, brainy games that. Any one of the games is individually fun and interesting, but we've hopefully got a good collection there together. And so, yeah, I think, I think there are some similarities there too.
Joseph Rueter: Yeah. Newspapers have had the crossword for, I don't know, haven't looked into that history. Maybe we should talk to some newspaper historian about the impact of crossword on subscription, right? Something like that is being drawn forward to the days that we're living now.
Nate Kadlac: Looking back And, knowing what, you know, now what's the offer you give Josh, what's, you, you offered 300 K [00:26:00] knowing what, you know, now.
Aaron Kardell: Oh, the, the New York times got to steal. We can just assume based on what's been published one to 3 million, it would have been a stretch offer for me to get, 5 million back then.
Aaron Kardell: Unequivocally, I would do that all day long. And, like, I think this is a property that's easily worth eight figures. And, especially in the New York
Joseph Rueter: Times hands. Well, that's the question is how much is it worth not in their hands, right? How much of the value of this is riding the platform it's on? Yeah, such a good
Aaron Kardell: question.
Aaron Kardell: Yeah, it's, hard to speak in alternate realities of how big would this game be today if I if I had been fortunate enough to buy it? What might have I messed up along the way or whatever? And obviously don't have the New York Times distribution behind me. Yeah, it's so hard to say. But the game is, without a doubt, bigger today [00:27:00] under the New York Times ownership than it would be under my ownership.
Aaron Kardell: And I, like, I'd be posturing or full of bluster to, to think otherwise. But, but I do think that the game has so much, staying power itself that it's, it's always going to feel like a missed opportunity for sure.
Nate Kadlac: I think Joseph mentioned this earlier. It's like nine out of 10 people we interview are bringing up Wyrtle as some inspiration.
Nate Kadlac: It's kind of like. Bitcoin, you know, and all the NFT derivative derivatives or, or it's like Nintendo in the eighties that revive an industry and create a bunch of. You know, derivative properties around it, but it's such a, such a unique game. I think this is more of like a love letter episode to, to Wordle and really inspiring a number of game creators to, to create their own Wordle inspired games, which has been really fun to see.
Nate Kadlac: What's your takeaway from all of this, Aaron?
Aaron Kardell: I think it's a huge inspiration to all game creators, no matter how you look at it. I think it's kind of caused a little [00:28:00] bit of a resurgence in Daily games and brainy games and web games and in each of those three areas, like, I think everybody kind of assumed more or less, I think, like, if I'm on my iPhone, I'm downloading an app to play a game and like, I think there are a lot more web based games today of popular note than there were pre 21, especially on mobile.
Aaron Kardell: I think, you know, anytime I. I hope this is okay, Josh, but anytime I am asked about, Hey, good game. And what we're up to, like, I kind of started talking, well, you know, we do like daily Brady games, like, Oh, you know, wordle and it's not like we don't have. A Wordle clone, like I've always been emphatic about that, but it's just, it's been a genre definer and it's, it's in the lingo now in a way that people can talk about it and have an affinity towards.
Aaron Kardell: [00:29:00] So although I always feel like this got away, like I'm always going to be grateful to, to Josh for kind of how he opened up the category really in a way that I think has been something that's risen tides for everybody. So that's been pretty cool to see.
Joseph Rueter: I think that's so true. It's the tide has risen on games and.
Joseph Rueter: Wordle played a giant role in that it continues and I anticipated coming up over and over and over again as we continue to chat with game developers like those that had made their first game as a result of seeing Wordle or those that had games in play and have used the Increase of activity and interest in daily brainy games as some kind of a provocation to make their games better or different or change or you name it.
Joseph Rueter: And to the extent that games help all [00:30:00] of us kind of jump out of yourself and play a game and allow yourself some time or some respite or the opportunity to see your own thinking happen. We're all better for it. So thank you, Josh. Thank you, Aaron. And, sorry, I didn't get the game, man. Maybe you get a call now or a reply.
Aaron Kardell: Josh, if you, if you're listening, I'd, I'd love to chat. It'd be great on the record, but off the record would be good too. But there's some
Joseph Rueter: NDA that's got an expiration in it somewhere.
Aaron Kardell: Aaron at hey. gg, A A R O N E T H E Y. gg DM me on Twitter. I'm here for you, buddy. Maybe you can not reply this time.
Aaron Kardell: Okay. Thanks for sharing, Aaron. All right. Thanks guys. That's the pod.