What five-letter word describes what media and technology companies are increasingly relying on to attract subscribers and keep them coming back?
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Apple launched a series of word-focused puzzles on its subscription news service last fall. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn introduced a set of word games this spring. News sites including Morning Brew, The Washington Post, Vox Media, and The Boston Globe have added new puzzles beyond crosswords and hired staff to work on the games. The publication you are reading also contains a collection of riddles.
To be fair, it’s not all fun and games. For media companies, gaming is a way to attract new customers in the face of declining traffic from Google, X and Meta, which have retreated from emphasizing news. For technology companies that offer editorial services, puzzles are a way to engage existing users who might not return to the app on a daily basis while also attracting new subscribers.
“A publication is more than the stories it produces. “It’s a lot of fun,” said John Temple, a former journalist and co-founder of Amuse Labs, which sells a software platform that helps publishers create puzzles. “They want to recreate for people the same satisfying experience they had from years of doing crossword puzzles in the newspaper.”
Adding games and puzzles has become a mainstay of many publishers’ strategies over the past few years, and momentum has surged in recent months with Apple and LinkedIn jumping in. These news and technology companies are competing for consumers’ attention against competitors like Netflix, Spotify, and others. When it comes to digital entertainment, others are likely to follow.
Many games aren’t shooters like Call of Duty or the next Angry Birds. These are often word or logic puzzles that can help people feel a sense of accomplishment by exercising their intellectual muscles. For companies with editorial products, word games aren’t all that different from their core business.
There are early signs that the game is working. At The New York Times, new subscriptions to non-news products, including subscriptions to Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic, exceeded new subscriptions to core news offerings in the first quarter. (The Times does not provide game subscription figures alone.) Apple and LinkedIn said early results were promising, without providing specifics.
The publisher has a long history of adding games to its news offering. For over a century, newspapers have included word games and riddles. The New York World published its first crossword puzzle on its “Fun” page on December 21, 1913.
As an exception, The Times reports that “strict News“It is a species for smart and thoughtful people.” Things changed after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and dragged the United States into World War II. Times editors said the heavy news environment may leave readers wanting a break from the constant bleak headlines. In February 1942, The Times introduced the first crossword puzzle that became a feature of the newspaper.
Today, publishers and technology platforms find the news cycle just as difficult, with the Israel-Gaza and Ukraine wars as well as the upcoming U.S. presidential election and the culture wars surrounding it. News and technology executives have tried to provide at least some refuge, however brief, from the endless barrage of bad news.
“News and current events are often characterized by intractability,” said Ross Trudeau, puzzle editor at Apple News. “Puzzles are a way to show that there are solutions to some of these problems, even elegant ones.”
(Mr. Trudeau comes from a true media family: his parents are Gary Trudeau, best known for creating the “Doonesbury” comic strip, and Jane Foley, a television news anchor and journalist.)
The Times presents a groundbreaking game that goes beyond crossword puzzles. These include handcrafted creations such as Spelling Bee, where users create as many words as possible from a few letters, and Connections, which groups together a series of words with similar links. In 2022, The Times acquired Wordle, a surprise hit word guessing game, from its creator, who was a Reddit engineer. The game went viral after people shared their Wordle scores on social media.
Other people noticed too. Last fall, Apple introduced a set of daily crossword puzzles for Apple News+ subscribers, a paid subscription service that curates articles from partner publishers. (The Times left the program in 2020.) Last month, Apple launched Quartiles, a spelling game in which users spell words based on a series of jumbled, fragmented word tiles.
“The more value we add to Apple News+, the more subscribers we gain, which benefits our publishing partners,” said Lauren Kern, editor-in-chief of Apple News. Apple has also integrated Apple News+ Puzzles into Games Center, its gaming social network, allowing users to compete with friends for the highest score.
LinkedIn has introduced three puzzle games that are featured prominently on its website and mobile app. Dan Roth, LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief, said the goal is to keep the content consistent with the company’s “professional network” brand while giving people a reason to regularly return and engage in conversations, both publicly and privately, on the site.
“One of LinkedIn’s main goals is to attract people to the site and share the knowledge in their heads with their networks,” Mr. Roth said in an interview. “Sometimes you need to get the pump going to get people to start sharing, and adding games is a surefire way to do that.”
The companies said their approach to creating games began with humans. Apple said it promoted a diverse team of puzzle creators and contributors to appeal to a wider audience and tried to avoid crossword jargon in its puzzle clues.
LinkedIn has hired Paolo Pasco, a longtime crossword puzzle creator and recent Harvard University graduate, as its first games editor. The Times highlighted the gaming team by demonstrating the low-tech, hand-written process of creating some of the site’s most popular puzzles.
These companies are all in the business of building new habits for consumers. This is especially true for new, regular customers who use the app for gaming but hope to stick around long enough to introduce them to other products like podcasts, sports, or even hard news.
“When we see subscribers engaging with both games and news in a given week, we know that that pattern has the highest long-term subscriber retention,” said Jonathan Knight, head of gaming at The Times. “So we’re doing a lot to encourage that behavior.”
Many companies have said that people should feel good about visiting their app. Even if it’s just a brief but satisfying moment of completing a crossword puzzle in a time that works best for you personally.
“Now that the time has been well spent, they are deciding how it will apply to their lives,” said Knight. “Do one puzzle a day. Put it down and move on when you want. It’s a real sense of accomplishment and people can feel good about it.”
