There’s probably a more simple reason for this stance too: puzzle games are cost effective. Our brand stands for quality human-made, edited and curated.” “We don’t want a portfolio of 30 games that are just blended together in a commoditized way. “We want to have a handful of really high quality, human-crafted puzzles for people to solve every day,” said Knight. The plan could stretch to logic puzzle games given they’re a natural extension of what’s already been established, but that should be about it for now. Word puzzle games are the priority, said Knight. “Having that relationship with the user, through a New York Times account is the foundation of that.”ĭon’t expect any of those investments to deviate too much from what’s already worked. “The next level for us is to push this strategy forward and have a sort of metagame that’s going to keep someone engaged for a long period of time as well as give them bragging rights and that sense that they’re improving their mind and skills with the game,” said Knight. The more subscribers play multiple games at the Times, the better the retention rate tends to be, he said. Still, Knight believes there’s more that could be done to foster that sense of progression and achievement across its games. Of course, there are elements of this already baked into the games, like the stats and streaks in both the Wordle and Crossword games. It makes sense then that one of Knight’s big focuses right now is on finding new ways to mine the inherent competitive nature of games. That’s good for any media business that wants to become an indispensable habit for people. So players get the same experience as each other on a daily basis. Each of the ones at the Times have a puzzle a day. More people read stories in different ways, from different sources at different times of the day. On this basis, gaming is an important habit forming an anchor for the publisher in a way that news isn’t really these days. “Everyone gets the same experience around these games on a daily rhythm.” “What the Times has done so well with its games strategy to date is that it replicates some of the habit friendly elements of that traditional newspaper experience,” said Joseph Teasdale, head of tech at Enders Analysis. When this happens it will mark the end of a gradual transformation that began in 2021 when the Spelling Bee puzzle game was added to the Crossword app. Given this shift, a planned relaunch of the app later this year as the New York Times Games app is unsurprising. Last month, it added Sudoku, joining The Crossword, The Mini Crossword, Spelling Bee and Wordle. The app (despite the name) is the hub of all the publisher’s puzzle games on mobile devices. So they expedited plans to create a more rounded experience for subscribers - especially in its Crossword app. Thanks to an influx of people that came to the publisher’s games section on the back of the deal, execs there wanted to do what they could to capitalize on this momentum. “If you’re a subscriber, and on any given week, you engage with both news and games, the likelihood that you’re going to retain over a long period of time is much higher,” said Knight.īeyond subscribers, Wordle was also a shot in the arm for the Times’ product strategy for games. For all intents and purposes, Wordle became another marketing funnel for potential subscribers - a notable amount of whom are younger, more international and more diverse, per the publisher.
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And once they were there, it became a question of how to get them to stick around: often by getting them to play other games at the Times and then by convincing them to spend more time looking at other content there entirely. It brought in people who wouldn’t have otherwise come to The New York Times.
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