I have been playing mobile games for a very long time, especially as someone who runs a mobile game website (hint: it’s the website you’re reading right now). There are some games that I have played with my wife going back several years, and the very first one was Words With Friends.
Back in the day, this was the most popular Scrabble clone in the world. If you downloaded this game in the early to mid-2010s and then connected it with your Facebook account and your contact list, then you would most likely find that your friends are playing the game. You could send words back and forth with them, try to hug the triple-word spaces, and then gloat when you beat them.
Recently, my wife and I were looking for mobile games to play against each other, and we decided to try to run it back. We downloaded Words With Friends 2, Assuming that this was the most modernized version, we logged into our old accounts, and prepared to dust off our linguistic skills against each other.
Folks, it’s been a very long time since I last played this game, so I was completely unprepared for what the game has become. Right from the moment that I logged in, I was completely inundated with bloatware and useless content. The user interface is so full of quests, characters that do a sad job of attempting to be cute, and the game trying to get me to do anything except send words to friends.
Completing the quests earns me some type of currency that gets me absolutely nothing that I like. I do not care about cosmetic modifications or anything else that the game is trying to sell me. All that I want to do is send words back and forth with my wife and friends.
Of course, you are constantly getting spammed with urgent pleas to send words back and forth with AI players that Zynga has added to the game for some reason. There are also requests to send words to random players, but the AI players are severely emphasized. And of course, anytime you complete a quest, you have to sit through a long congratulations screen, even if you want nothing to do with any of the rewards.
Of course, after every single word you play, an advertisement video pops up. Typically, it’s the kind of advertisement videos that require you to click X three or four times to escape from the entire advertisement. It’s the ads that start with a video, then a playable segment, then a still screen, that it takes between 30 and 45 seconds to escape from even if you stop them short.
Words With Friends 2 was a completely miserable experience, so we decided to try the original Words With Friends to see if it was more tolerable and less bloated. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It’s the same game as the second one, only with graphics that look straight out of 2013. The quests, the bloat, and the advertisements are just as bad as the second one, and it’s equally difficult to figure out how to send words to your real friends.
My wife and I were extremely frustrated, but then I remembered hearing about a game called Wordfeud that my coworkers played back in 2011, which I had never joined in on. Upon checking the App Store, it appears that the game is still around. I downloaded it to see if it was any better than the Words With Friends fiasco.
To put it simply, it was a breath of fresh air. It has a very simple interface that contains no additional accouterments other than actually sending words to people, whether it’s friends or random. It has all of the same double and triple letters and words that Scrabble and Words With Friends contain, and the gameplay is the classic interface that you might remember from 2012.
My wife downloaded it, and immediately we started sending words back and forth. Advertisements do pop up, but only after every three words or so, and usually, they take only one click to get out of, not three clicks. My in-laws also downloaded the game, and we have been sending words back and forth, as well as gloating about our victories or cussing each other out in defeat, ever since.
From my experiences, there is a huge void in player-versus-player word games that Zynga completely abandoned when it decided to make Words With Friends terrible in the name of greed, bad business decisions, or whatever else prompted it to make the franchise unplayable. Rest in peace, Words With Friends; at this point, you would be better off dead and deleted from the App Store altogether.