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A Wordle game jam has inspired a handful of weird little tabletop games – Polygon

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Matthew R.F. Balousek thinks about Wordle the same way he does dice. The Hostos College lecturer tells his student to consider a game tool’s affordances — all the things it can do — and then strike from that list everything they have seen used in a game. Dice can be rolled to show a number, sure. But they can also be stacked, spun, aligned, and hucked across the room.

It’s perhaps no surprise that Wordle, the browser-based word game phenomenon created by Josh Wardle (who recently sold it to the New York Times), stuck in Balousek’s creative craw long enough that he created an impressive collection of game design musings before realizing he needed to just sit down and make his own game. Not content with toiling away by his lonesome, he decided to host The Wordle Jam and invite anyone else possessed with the five-letter spirit.

For those who have somehow completely missed the quaint zeitgeist that is Wordle, here’s a brief rundown: players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word by inputting letters into a grid. Correct but misplaced letters will show up as yellow, while spot-on placements show up green. Everything else is grayed out on the grid as well as the keyboard. The smartest part is its ability to be shared on social media in what Balousek calls “the mosaic,” which has become the conversation opener du jour in group chats, Discord servers, and Twitter threads. But it’s also given designers new and old pause, with many surprised by its virality as well as its simplicity.

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And therein lies the inspiration for The Wordle Jam.

“I think any time there’s a non-zero number of things being made, that’s it. That’s the whole ball game,” Balousek told Polygon in an interview. All the niche movement needed was a name, which he was happy to provide, alongside a landing page on the internet. The Wordle Jam ran through January 31 and managed to accrue 10 entries, including Balousek’s, but he wasn’t preoccupied with measuring success and instead delighted by all the ways people had transformed the simple letter blocks into fully extant experiences, tools, and even poetry.

Image: Lynne M. Meyer

Lynne M. Meyer’s The Cottage, The Witch, and the Wordle sprung from the tabletop RPG writer’s fascination with finding the right word for a task and the power that connection provides, especially in the context of practical witchcraft. Her game uses Wordle results to calculate points that players can then spend on a list of features for their own witchy cottage nestled in the woods. A better performance could mean adding a second-floor library, an apiary in the backyard, or enough candles to cover every available surface. Meyer appreciated Wordle’s solitary nature and wanted to give the contemplative players more to chew every day.

Designer Pearse Anderson took a similar route, but his entry titled Your True Name puts players in the metaphorical shoes of the mystic word itself as it is spoken into existence by a coven, summoning circle, or other collection of magical practitioners. Every word becomes a brief journaling prompt where players describe the effect of the spell. Yellow letters increase power but also volatility, while green letters inch the word closer to its True Name and full potential.

“Because the Wordle changes each day, all players in Your True Name are working towards a globally consistent and randomized goal,” Anderson told Polygon via email. “I can play with a friend in Utrecht or Ulaanbaatar, and though we start our fantasy worlds in different places, our spellcasting converges at the True Name of that day’s Wordle — that’s magical.”

Balousek’s own entry, Wordle Games, picks at the seams of Wordle’s construction in playful and interesting ways. The 12-page zine contains five entries, though the first — A Wordle for Leibowitz — is a playful interpretation of Wordle’s rules “in case this zine survives the en masse destruction of knowledge and civilization, but computers don’t and so we can’t play Wordle anymore,” he wrote.

Results for Emophecy, a game by Johnny Willcox-Benney shows a black background with a field of emojis.

Image: Johnny Willcox-Beney

Kingslayer transforms Wordle into a story prompt about an assassin and their mission, with each row representing a character in their lives. Colors and the shape of the mosaic all get translated into places, personalities, and even the form of the assassin’s weapon. Speaking of shapes, the much less serious That Cloud Looks Like a Butt simply tasks players with sending an image that reminds them of any mosaic a friend shares. It’s cloud watching for the terminally online, unfortunately distant or playfully interpretive.

Swordle and Swordlecery is less a game and more an overwrought mechanic, Balousek admitted. It alchemizes the green and yellow scores of each column into ability scores written on the fingers of both hands (or paper, or a friend). For the rest of the day, the player is an adventurer who uses a six-sided die and their recorded stats to overcome physical and mental challenges. This might be a fun way to annoy your Dungeon Master or inspire a bit of live action role-playing. Regardless, at midnight that adventurer dies and is reborn with a fresh set of statistics.

The Wordle Jam’s existence hints at our fascination with seemingly simple games. The other entries change the solution to album art, for example, or imagine the mosaic shapes as farm animals needing to be corralled. Wordlebuilding uses word guesses as worldbuilding prompts (which solo RPG players would call an oracle), while Waddle charts the route a penguin takes after escaping from its zoo enclosure.

“There are rules all around us,” Balousek said. Playing games, especially roleplaying games, requires interrogating and testing those rules. The tabletop RPG hobby might be niche, but he believes anyone who enjoys Wordle would benefit from playing the jam’s entries if only to see how people can alter the assumed walls of an experience to create something wholly unique.

“One of the first steps is to draw from real life and identify those rules that are all around us,” Balousek said. “Rules will always be around us as humans, governing our spaces. Tabletop games allow us to think about them and what might happen if they suddenly change.”

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Ask Andy: How can you tell whether a startup is a good place to work? When is it safe to disclose a mental-health challenge to coworkers?

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As a software developer who would like to work for a startup, what should I look for in a company so that I know it’s legit? If I am putting a lot of work into a product, I want to know that at minimum it’s for a legitimate company and founder—not just another person with an overdone app idea that knows nothing about the tech world. Sarah C.

If you’re learning the startup game, the best bet here is to go later-stage. Focus on a pre-IPO company that is growing quickly, has raised money from blue-chip investors, and is getting positive buzz in the market that it will go public within the next two years.

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Then, don’t believe any of it.

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Network your way into three of the company’s team members on LinkedIn or through your network. Have three virtual or IRL coffees. Have them tell you about the culture: If they’re learning; if the company’s really growing; and most importantly, whether or not they respect and, ideally, admire the leadership.

Keep looking until you find this vetted opportunity.

That’s a systematic, rational approach. But that’s not the only way to go. You could throw it all out the window.

Find a company where you believe in the mission. One where you fall in love with the product or service. You might already be a high LTV customer or a power user. Check your credit card statement and your app home screen to source ideas. Your passion for the mission will make it work for you for some time, even if the company doesn’t work in the long run.

However you get there, once you’re inside for a year or two, you’ll be learning.

You may have to switch horses. That’s okay.

When you do, you’ll know more people, you’ll have more insight, and the path on what to pick next will be clearer. Heck, you might even notice an inflection point and meet a cofounder that leads to you starting a company yourself.

It’s like dating.

You probably won’t marry your first love—but you might. If you don’t, your judgment will iteratively improve. And the good news is unlike a marriage, you can change out your partner every few years. (What I’ve found, though, is that the most successful people professionally, and those who generate the most wealth, have more like 5- to 10-year runs.)

Trust your intuition. Follow your heart on the mission or product. Then, don’t trust yourself.  Study the market. Use the product.  And do at least three off-list references outside of who you interview with. Read every single Glassdoor entry.

And then jump!

You’ll be fine.

Do you think you could have shared your mental health conditions publicly BEFORE you were professionally successful, and still have been successful? Or was the fact that you had already achieved professional success what allowed you to be open? Zack

No, I don’t think I could have shared before we succeeded. I wouldn’t have had the courage to, and I feared it might be career-limiting.

Then again, it was almost seven years ago that I had my I-can’t-deny-this-any-longer moment with my Bonobos colleagues and investors. As of today, I think it’s becoming more possible to be candid about mental health. I hope we can move to a world where I could have been more open, sooner, at least selectively with my leadership team and board.

Some entrepreneurs ask me when to tell their VCs about the mental-health challenge or mental-health diagnosis they wrestle with. I always say the same thing: at a breakfast meeting, four months after you’ve closed the round and hit your numbers. Nobody cares about your neurodivergence if you’re performing—and most VCs actually know enough to know that most founders have more going on than meets the eye.

With your team, I think it’s doable, even now. Perhaps especially now. The truth is, they know. They know you deal with stuff because they’re around you. And the vulnerability you share in disclosing will multiply their respect for you. More importantly, it’ll give those team members the space to reciprocally share their stuff with their colleagues, and potentially you as well, and bring their full selves to work.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

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Take-Two Buys Gearbox And Its New ‘Borderlands’ Game From Embracer – Forbes

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If you’re a game developer owned by Embracer Group at this point, you are nervous about layoffs, shutdowns or game cancellations after the last few years. But now, there is a somewhat happy ending for one of them, Gearbox.

It’s just been announced that Take-Two, which owns GTA developer Rockstar, will purchase Gearbox for $460 million. This also includes the properties Gearbox owns, the Borderlands and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands franchises, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem. The report says Gearbox has six games in development, five sequels, including a new Borderlands game, the not-announced-but-definitely-happening Borderlands 4. Here’s Strauss Zelnick:

“Our acquisition of Gearbox is an exciting moment for Take-Two and will strengthen our industry-leading creative talent and portfolio of owned intellectual property, including the iconic Borderlands franchise,” said Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “This combination enhances the financial profile of our existing projects with Gearbox and unlocks the opportunity for us to drive increased long-term growth by leveraging the full resources of Take-Two across all of Gearbox’s exciting initiatives.”

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Gearbox has been working with 2K and Take-Two for decades, so it was a logical place for them to land. This is, of course, not a great look for Embracer, who only purchased Gearbox three years ago. The price tag back then was “worth up to $1.3 billion” but there were a lot of strings attached to that where it’s not necessarily the case that selling for $$460 million netted them a ~$900 million loss.

As for what this means for gamers, it would seem something like the Borderlands franchise is now on more stable ground, as it was hard to believe any project at Embracer is fully safe these days. Last year, Embracer quietly cancelled 29 different unannounced games and shut down seven studios in a six month period including Volition and Free Radical Design. That came with around 1,400 layoffs. More recently, Embracer laid off 97 people at Eidos in Janaury and cancelled a Deus Ex game.

Sufficed to say, those at Gearbox probably feel pretty good about this. And as for Take-Two, Borderlands is still a valuable IP, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderland was a surprise hit. There’s a new Homeworld game coming as well. In an era for multi-billion dollar acquisition, Gearbox for $460 million doesn’t seem that bad. That’s probably a third of what GTA 6 will sell on day one next year.

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What's Brewing in the iPhone 16 Rumor Mill? AI, Action Buttons and More – CNET

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As the iPhone 15 settles into the market, the tech community is buzzing with anticipation for Apple’s next-generation handset, which is expected to be named “iPhone 16.” 

We’ve heard whispers about the iPhone 16’s features, which are said to span from a new power-efficient display to larger screens, better zoom lenses, an action button and, perhaps not surprisingly, a suite of new gen-AI powered features.

Read more: Best iPhone of 2024

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However, the iPhone 16 is still presumably six months away and nothing will be confirmed until Apple’s iPhone event in the fall. Still, these rumors could give us an idea of what to expect from the next iPhone.

Here are the most credible rumors for the iPhone 16.

Will the iPhone 16 fold?

Probably not. The newest rumors suggest Apple has been working on iPhone Flip models in two different sizes, though there have been difficulties in making the devices to Apple’s standards. The company may also be working on a folding tablet with a screen around the size of an iPad Mini. Even though virtually every major phone-maker — from Google to Oppo to OnePlus and Samsung — have launched their own bendable handsets, Apple has been characteristically quiet about whether there will ever be an iPhone Flip or an iPhone Fold.

Prior rumors said Apple may not launch its own flexible screen device until 2025. Samsung hasn’t let phone fans forget it — by releasing an app that will let Apple phone owners experience a Z Fold-esque experience by placing two iPhones side-by-side.

iPhone 16 Pro models to get bigger screens?

Apple has maintained the two screen sizes for iPhone Pro models since 2020 when it launched the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro and the 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max. However, that’s rumored to change with the iPhone 16 Pro models, which might get bigger screens.

Display analyst Ross Young suggested earlier this year that the iPhone 16 Pro models will have larger screens, putting the sizes at 6.3 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro Max. That rumor was later corroborated by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who said the iPhone 16 Pro models could grow by “a couple tenths of an inch diagonally.”

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models are believed to be sticking with the current 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes. If the size increase is accurate, it would be yet another move from Apple to distinguish its Pro iPhone models from its regular ones.

iPhone 15 screen sizes

  • iPhone 15: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro Max: 6.7 inches.

Rumored iPhone 16 screen sizes

  • iPhone 16: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro: 6.3 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro Max: 6.9 inches.

iPhone 16 gets more AI tricks

One of the most salient selling points of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series and Google’s Pixel 8 lineup were each of their souped-up AI tips and tricks, and it wouldn’t be a major shock if Apple went in the same direction. Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone on the record this year confirming Apple sees “a huge opportunity for Apple with gen AI and AI.”

According to Gurman’s Power On newsletter, iOS 18 will feature generative AI technology that “should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences.”

A September report from the Information says Apple plans to use large language models, a crucial part of generative AI, to make Siri smarter. The report said this feature is expected to be released with an iPhone software update next year. 

Read More: iPhone iOS 18: A Possible Big Leap In AI

iPhone 16 design: New action button?

In March, AppleInsider published a collection of photographs purportedly displaying 3D-printed dummy models of the rumored iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. The images revealed that the iPhone 16 may have a vertical camera stack as opposed to a diagonal one and an action button, similar the one on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro.

iPhone 16 gets more power-efficient display?

Another change that could make its way to iPhone 16 displays is greater power efficiency. Samsung Display is apparently developing a new material set, dubbed M14, specifically for Apple, according to a TheElec report, which says the new technology should arrive on iPhones launching next year. M14 will replace the blue fluorescent technology that’s used now with blue phosphorescence technology, creating an even more power-efficient screen than the current LTPO ones used on Pro models, the report says.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

iPhone 16 gets better zoom?

Both the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max could both have 5x telephoto lenses next year. According to Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, a tetraprism lens will make its way to both Pro models next year, as opposed to just the Pro Max model. Apple equipped the iPhone 15 Pro with a 12-megapixel 3x optical zoom, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 12-megapixel 5x optical zoom camera, which is the equivalent of 120mm lens on a full-frame camera.

If this rumor is true, it could mark a breakthrough in design. When Apple launched the 15 Pro Max with its 5x telephoto lens, it cited the phone’s bigger body as to why the Pro Max had it, but the Pro didn’t.

iPhone 16 processors: A18 chip for all models?

In a break with the past two years, all four iPhone 16 models will apparently get a next-generation Apple chipset, which will all receive A18 branding. According to a MacRumors report citing Jeff Pu, an executive analyst for Haitong International Securities, all four models will have an A18 series chip with Pro iPhone models getting an A18 Bionic Pro and base models getting a regular A18.

The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus currently have an A16 Bionic, which debuted on the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, while the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max run on the A17 Pro processor. Pu says the A18 chip will be manufactured with TSMC’s cutting-edge 3 nanometer process.

Read more: Apple iPhone SE 4 Rumors: iPhone 14 Design, Face ID and More



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