LinkedIn is now in the gaming business. Starting today, users can play one of three different games on the LinkedIn mobile app or desktop: Exact, QueensAnd Cross climb. You can play each game once a day, and after your daily session you’ll get access to all sorts of metrics, including your high score and daily streak, various leaderboards, and who also played on your networks. The games are available here in the LinkedIn News and My Network section on desktop or in the My Network tab on mobile.
Here is a quick overview of the three games.
Exact is a word association game. The game reveals five different words and your job is to guess the category the words fit into. The words are displayed on a timer, with the goal being to guess the category with as few words as possible.
Cross climb combines interesting facts with clever wordplay. You are given a clue for a word and, using that word as your starting point, create a word ladder, with each subsequent entry just one letter away from the previous one. If you arrange the words in the correct order, you will receive the clue to guess the locked entries on the ladder and win the game. It’s probably better to see it in action:
Finally, Queens is the most interesting game because it is just a Sudoku without numbers. Place the queens on a grid so that no queens touch each other and there is a single queen in each row and column.
LinkedIn’s decision to delve into puzzle games shouldn’t come as a surprise. Digital content companies are struggling to make money as advertising revenue declines and Google does its best to make sure you never click on a valuable link again. Adding a range of “gaming” content has therefore proven extremely valuable. It offers companies a unique opportunity to attract new users and retain older ones, before ultimately getting both to spend money they otherwise wouldn’t.
Accordingly Axios, New York Times Games were played over 8 billion times last year, with more than half of those being games Wordlethe guessing game Just acquired in 2022. The Just offers subscription packages for its games individually or in a more expensive all-access package that bundles games with others New York Times Contents. In an interview with DigidayJonathan Knight, the publisher’s head of games, explained how gaming subscriptions have helped this Just Grow and retain users. “If you’re a subscriber and engage with both news and games in a given week, there’s a good chance you’ll stick around [your subscription] over a longer period of time is much higher.”
Other publications take similar paths. Late last year, Hearst, which publishes magazines and newspapers nationwide, acquired Puzzmo, a puzzle game platform that includes games like… Magic Tower And Really bad chess. And the trend isn’t just limited to digital news organizations, as Netflix’s gaming efforts continue to grow and add exclusive mobile versions of popular games like Hades And Sonic Mania Plus.
LinkedIn doesn’t yet charge fees for its games. Rather, they seem to be a way to retain users on the platform. In addition to showing a person’s high score and daily streak, LinkedIn shows who in a person’s connections has also played, as well as school and company leaderboards. Lakshman Somasundaram, product director at LinkedIn, said in the press release, “It’s time to open a new chapter in the way we deepen and rekindle relationships in the workplace, with fun at the core.”