What's the five-letter word that describes the activity media and technology companies are increasingly relying on to acquire subscribers and keep them coming back?
G
a
Ma
picture
vinegar
Apple released a series of word puzzles on its paid news service last fall. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn released a word game this spring. News sites including Morning Brew, The Washington Post, Vox Media and The Boston Globe have added new non-crossword puzzles and hired staff to develop games. Publications you read are also investing in their own collections of brain teasers.
Well, it's not exactly all fun and games. For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as site traffic declines due to Google, X and Meta moving away from a news focus. For tech companies that offer editorial services, puzzles are a way to draw in new subscribers while still retaining existing users who might not return to the app every day.
“Publications are more than the articles they produce. They're an experience to look forward to, a pleasure,” 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 their readers the same satisfaction that people who have been solving crossword puzzles in newspapers for years have felt.”
Adding games and puzzles has been a central part of many publishers' strategies for years now, and momentum has surged in recent months with the entry of Apple and LinkedIn. Others are likely to follow suit as these news and technology companies compete for consumer attention with rivals like Netflix, Spotify and other digital entertainment players.
Many of these games aren't Call of Duty-style shooters or the next generation of Angry Birds. They're often word or logic puzzles that challenge your brain and give you a sense of accomplishment. For editorial companies, word games aren't all that different from their core business.
There are early signs that games are working: At The New York Times, new subscriptions to its non-news services, which include gaming, cooking, the Wirecutter and athletics, outnumbered new subscriptions to its core news service in the first quarter. (The Times doesn't break out gaming subscription numbers alone.) Apple and LinkedIn said the early results are promising without providing details.
Publishers have a long history of adding games to the news. For over a century, newspapers have included word games and brain teasers. The New York World published the first crossword on its “Fun” page on December 21, 1913.
The exception is The Times, which said: “Strictly speaking newsBut things changed when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was drawn into World War II. Editors at The Times said that in a news-saturated environment, readers might want a change of pace from the relentlessly gloomy headlines. In February 1942, The Times introduced its first crossword puzzle, which became a centerpiece of the paper.
Publishers and technology platforms today are finding the news cycle similarly challenging, with wars in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine, the looming U.S. presidential election and the culture wars surrounding it, and news and technology executives have sought to offer at least some refuge, even if only for a short time, from the never-ending stream of bad news.
“News and current events issues are often difficult to solve,” said Ross Trudeau, puzzles editor at Apple News, “and puzzles suggest that some of these problems have solutions, and some are elegant solutions.”
(Trudeau comes from a powerful family in the media industry. His parents are Garry Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury comic strip, and Jane Pauley, a TV anchor and journalist.)
Beyond crossword puzzles, The New York Times has also released hit games, including handcrafted games like “Spelling Bee,” in which users create as many words as possible using just a few letters, and “Connections,” in which users group together a series of similarly connected words. In 2022, The New York Times acquired the unexpected hit word-guessing game “Wordle” from its developer, a former Reddit engineer. The game went viral after users shared their Wordle scores on social media.
Other companies are taking notice: Last fall, Apple began offering daily crossword puzzles to subscribers of its Apple News+, a paid subscription service that aggregates articles from partner publishers. (The New York Times left the program in 2020.) Last month, Apple unveiled a spelling game called Quartiles, in which users spell words based on a jumble of fragmented word tiles.
“The more value we add to Apple News+, the more subscribers we can attract and the more money our publishing partners can make,” said Lauren Kahn, editor-in-chief of Apple News. Apple also integrated the Apple News+ puzzles into Games Center, the company's gaming social network, so users can compete with their friends for the highest score.
LinkedIn has launched three puzzle games that are displayed prominently on its website and mobile apps, and Dan Roth, executive editor at LinkedIn, says the goal was to give people a reason to regularly return to the site and participate in conversations, both public and private, while aligning the content with the company's “professional network” brand.
“One of LinkedIn's primary goals is to get people to come to the site and share the knowledge that's in their heads with their network,” Ross said in an interview. “Sometimes you need to create a catalyst to get people to start sharing, and adding games is a clear way to do that.”
Both companies said their approach to game creation starts with people, and Apple touted its diverse team of puzzle creators and collaborators and said it tried to avoid crossword jargon in puzzle clues to appeal to a broader audience.
LinkedIn recently hired longtime crossword puzzle creator and recent Harvard graduate Paolo Pasco as its first games editor, and The Times profiled the company's games team by providing a look at the often low-tech process of hand-creating the site's most popular puzzles.
All of these companies are in the business of building new consumer habits, especially as they hope to draw new, casual customers into their app with games and then retain them long enough to introduce them to other products like podcasts, sports, or even hard news.
“When we see that in any given week, our subscribers are interested in both games and news, that pattern tells us they're most likely to retain their subscribers long-term,” said Jonathan Knight, head of games at The Times, “so we're doing lots of different things to incentivize that behavior.”
Many companies say people need to feel good about using their apps, even if it's just the fleeting satisfaction of solving a crossword puzzle in personal best time.
“It's a great way to use your time and it's up to you to decide how you want to incorporate it into your life,” Knight said. “You just do one puzzle a day, put one down and do the next one whenever you want. It's really fulfilling and people feel good about it.”
