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Streak counter is a minor part of the user interface. It is a number in the corner which tells the total number of days in a row that a player has solved the puzzle. Streak counter is free to implement but it dramatically changes the nature of the game.

Most of us have been through this transformation but didn't notice. That is why you are playing the puzzle at 11:52 pm from the hotel bed. That is why failing the game after the 180st day is so disappointing.

Influence of streak on the player's decision-making

The direct influence of the streak is that it turns players into more conservative and worse players.

If you are on the fourth guess and you have got a green pattern with three possible words for the answer. The rational thing to do in this case is to use the fifth guess to rule out one of the three candidates as impossible. Then the sixth guess would be the guaranteed win.

Without a streak, most of the players would take a chance and choose the fifth guess because getting the game in five guesses sounds nicer than having a guaranteed win in six.

With the streak, players would always choose the safer variant as they optimize their performance and try to avoid the loss, which is quite a different thing from winning.

Asymmetry problem

The streak makes the game into the asymmetric reward system.

Winning the game on day 200 is no more pleasant than winning the game on day 3. The streak doesn't increase the pleasure of success but increases the pain of failure. The more you played, the bigger number you accumulate to suffer from the eventual failure.

This is a strange bargain but people accept it unconsciously.

Sources of pressure

Here are two known cognitive biases that can help you understand this behavior.

The first one is the loss aversion which makes people feel losses two times stronger compared to gains. The streak makes the game into something that you can lose which changes its emotional side completely.

And the sunk cost fallacy takes care of the rest. 200 days of playing look like an investment and leaving the investment feels uncomfortable even if it is just numbers.

The fact that the puzzle expires at midnight gives you the daily deadline for your leisure time.

The good side of the streak that is legitimate

All of this doesn't mean that the streak is a bad feature. It works and there is a very good reason why it works.

Indeed, building a habit requires visible continuity. A streak gives you a motivation to play every day even when you don't want it. Regular play is the only way to build the habit. Many people owe their habit of playing the game to the streak counter.

The problem isn't in the mechanism itself but in the fact that the daily puzzle offers no flexibility for the mechanism.

Solution to the problem is another game

The conflict gets solved when you stop playing the daily puzzle as your only variant.

Having the unlimited rounds to play along with the daily word allows you to turn the streak into one of many aspects of your relation with the game. You keep the routine, you keep the counter and you play your game without any stakes. Wordle Unlimited was created exactly for this purpose with the Daily mode alongside unlimited playing, timed rounds, topic packs and multiplayer rooms at wordleunlimited.dev.

Apart from the emotional comfort, this game has practical benefits too. The conservative gameplay that the streak encourages isn't very useful for your skill level as you aren't developing any risky tactics. The unlimited rounds become the place for experimenting with aggressive guessing, failing and learning from the mistakes. In this mode, the loss of a round costs you nothing.

Different lengths of playing are also useful. Playing the daily puzzle at five letters while training at seven keeps your streak and training separate, which is the best that you can do.

Reasonable approach to a streak

Keep the streak if it helps you to play. It is a legitimate use of the psychological tool and there is no need to worry about it.

Just be attentive to how it affects you. If you find yourself playing the puzzle at midnight when you feel tired, taking only the safe guesses every time and afraid of the loss more than happy of the win, the counter stops working for you.

The number means nothing. It is just the record of consecutive days and nothing about your skills and it means nothing for other people. The loss of five hundred-day streak changes nothing about your skills and you will start from one the next day, which is the nice place to be.