What four-letter word refers to an activity that media and technology companies increasingly rely on to gain subscribers and retain them?

Games.

Last fall, Apple launched a series of word-focused games in its subscription news service. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, did the same thing in the spring. News sites such as The New York Times, Morning Brew, The Washington Post, Vox Media, and The Boston Globe have added new puzzle games beyond crosswords and hired staff to work on games.

It’s not exactly a picnic. For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as their sites struggle with declining traffic from Google, social platform X and Meta, which have shifted away from a focus on news. For tech companies that offer editorial content, games are a way to attract new subscribers while also engaging existing users who may not return to apps every day.

“A publication is not just about the stories it produces. It’s about an experience that you look forward to, a pleasure,” says John Temple, a former journalist and co-founder of Amuse Labs, which sells a software platform that helps publishers create puzzle games. “They want to recreate the same satisfying experience for people that they had for years doing crosswords in the newspaper.”

Adding games and puzzles has become a central part of many publishers’ strategies in recent years, with momentum picking up in recent months as Apple and LinkedIn jumped on board. As these information and technology companies compete for consumers’ attention against competitors like Netflix, Spotify and other forms of digital entertainment, it’s likely that others will follow.

Most games aren’t Call of Duty-style shooters or the next Angry Birds. These often involve word games or logic puzzles, which can help people feel a sense of accomplishment by exercising their intellectual muscles. For companies that offer editorial products, word games are also not radically different from their core business.

Early signs show that these games are working. At the New York Times, new subscriptions to non-news products — which include subscriptions to Games, Cooking, Wirecutter and The Athletic — outpaced new subscriptions to the core news offering in the first quarter. Apple and LinkedIn said, without elaborating, that early results were promising.

The Times, which billed itself as “a newspaper strictly for intelligent and thoughtful people,” was an exception. The situation changed after Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, which drew the United States into World War II. Times editors felt that because of the heaviness of the news, readers might want to distract themselves from the dark, incessant headlines. In February 1942, The Times launched its first crossword puzzle, which became one of the newspaper’s trademarks.

Today, publishers and tech platforms have found the news cycle just as challenging, with the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, as well as the looming U.S. presidential election and the political debates surrounding it. Information and technology leaders have sought to provide refuge, however brief, from what can seem like a never-ending stream of bad news.

“News and current events are often characterized by unsolvable elements,” said Ross Trudeau, senior puzzle editor at Apple News. “Games are a way of saying that some of these problems have solutions, even elegant ones. »

Beyond crosswords, the Times had games that got people talking. These include craft creations such as Spelling Bee, where users create as many words as possible with a handful of letters, and Connections, where people group together a series of words that have a similar connection. In 2022, the Times purchased Wordle, a surprisingly successful guessing game, from its creator, who was a Reddit engineer. The game went viral when people shared their Wordle results on social media.

Others noticed it. Last fall, Apple launched a daily crossword series for subscribers to Apple News, its paid subscription service that brings together articles from partner publishers. Last month, Apple released a spelling game, Quartiles, which lets users spell words from a series of fragmented word tiles.

LinkedIn followed with three games, which are highlighted on its website and mobile apps. Dan Roth, editor-in-chief of LinkedIn, says the goal was to keep the content consistent with the company’s “professional networking” brand, while giving users a reason to return to the site regularly and to engage in conversations there, both publicly and privately.

The companies consulted explain that their approach to game creation begins with human beings. Apple touts its diverse team of crossword creators and contributors in order to attract a wider audience.

LinkedIn has hired longtime crossword creator and recent Harvard University graduate Paolo Pasco as its first games editor.

All of these companies have the mission of creating new habits for consumers. This is especially true for new casual customers, whom they may lure into their apps with games, but hope to keep long enough to introduce them to other products, such as podcasts, sports – and even l Pure and hard news.

“When we see subscribers engaging with both gaming and news in a given week, we see that long-term subscriber retention is some of the best around,” noted Jonathan Knight, head of games at The Times. “So we do a lot of things to encourage that behavior. »