TITLE
Why Big Publications Like The New York Times Are Making Games (But Barely Covering Them)
AUTHOR
Nathan Grayson
PUBLICATION
Aftermath
YEAR
2024
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
If you’re somebody who even semi-regularly keeps up with the news, you’ve probably already heard this one: These days, The New York Times is a games (and cooking) app that happens to include news. Wordle, which NYT acquired from creator Josh Wardle in 2022 for somewhere “in the low seven figures,” is a juggernaut that the NYT declared had brought “tens of millions” of new users to the publication within months. Two years later, millions still play every week, alongside NYT’s other popular games. Now, with traditional news media on shakier legs than ever, NYT and other publications are working furiously to replicate that success.Most recently, Hearst Publishing – which owns dozens of outlets including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Houston Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire – acquired Puzzmo, a puzzle game platform headed up by indie developers Zach Gage and Orta Therox. Puzzmo games now appear in over 50 Hearst publications, as well as non-Hearst publications like Polygon (itself a gaming site) thanks to licensing deals. The Washington Post recently ramped up internal game efforts following The Times’ success. Even Defector began offering a weekly crossword puzzle last August.
Games and news might not seem like the most immediately intuitive combo, but that’s only if you view games through the lens of big-budget heavy hitters like Grand Theft Autos and Call of Duty. In reality, the current news game boom can be traced back to the crossword puzzle, the first of which – at least, in newspapers – appeared in 1913 (so a little before Grand Theft Auto came out). The pairing makes perfect sense: Crosswords are habit forming. While news ebbs and flows, readers continue to pick up publications for a reliable brain teaser.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Defector
Hearst Publishing
The New York Times
The Washington Post
GAMES MENTIONED
Connections
Puzzmo
Wordle
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Zoe Bell
Andrew Daines
Zach Gage
Chris Grant
Mike Hume
Jonathan Knight
Zachary Small
Jasper Wang
ALTERNATE LINK
Archived Copy @ Internet Archive