Steve Jobs used to say, in conversations and talks, that focus is about saying no. In another repeated interview line, he added: I am as proud of many of the things we have not done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things. Those two lines organize the silence of Sudoku BLA. Every thing the app does not do is a deliberate decision, not an oversight.
Sudoku BLA has no analytics. It does not collect anything about you, not even anonymous data. There is a dedicated post on that decision. But the no-collection decision is part of a larger, broader silence. The app, in aggregate, was built to do little, and to do it well.
No login. You do not need to create an account, pick a username, remember a password, recover an email. You open the app and it hands you Sudoku. Whoever is seeing the screen is anyone who opens iPhone, iPad or Mac. Sudoku BLA does not need to know who that is.
No social network. No friend-follow button. No global leaderboard. No comparison scoreboard. No weekly leaderboard. No little trophy for player of the week, month, year. Sudoku is not a competitive game. Sudoku is a solitary game. The decision to keep the solitude of the game is what preserves the reason most people play: inner silence, concentration, calm.
No notifications. Not to remind you to play. Not to congratulate the seven-day streak. Not to announce a new puzzle (there is no new puzzle; there are eight thousand ready). Notifications are an engagement mechanism that hijacks attention. Sudoku BLA chose not to use them.
No sound in the game. No background music. No correct-answer chime. No applause at the end. No buzz for errors. Mentioned in other posts but worth repeating, because it is a big decision. Sudoku is a concentration game. Loud sound breaks concentration. Therefore, no sound.
No ads. There never will be. BLA apps will not have them. It is a business model decision, not a price decision. Ads in a game app are what pay for the game, but they are also what steals the experience. Sudoku BLA chose not to charge, not to display ads, and to be an editorial product rather than an ad-revenue product. BLA is an editorial studio; it makes sense.
The result of all those non-things is an app that looks smaller, simpler, less screen-cluttered. And that does exactly what it should: hand you the game. When Steve Jobs spoke about focus, that was exactly it. It is not the app doing everything. It is the app doing one thing and doing it very well, in silence.
