The New York Times Is a Gaming Company

"The New York Times is a gaming company with news as a side hustle."

That's a joke inside NYT Games.

But it's not that far off.

The numbers behind the joke

Today, The New York Times Games reaches millions of people every day across Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, the Crossword, and more. Wordle alone has driven billions of plays and brought tens of millions of new users into the broader NYT ecosystem.

And they're still leaning in.

In 2026, NYT launched Crossplay, its first true two-player word game. It's a standalone experience built around real-time competition, social play, head-to-head matches, stat tracking, and post-game analysis. This isn't a novelty feature. It's a deliberate move toward deeper, shared participation.

Why this matters beyond game design

Subscribers who engage with both news and games are significantly more likely to retain long term than news-only readers. In some cases, people spend more time inside Games than with the digital newspaper itself. Games have become a meaningful driver of habit, acquisition, and stickiness across the subscription business.

NYT didn't just add puzzles. They turned daily participation into a habit, and that habit into a growth engine.

What participation as a product looks like

This is what it looks like in practice: one small, repeatable action you can do every day. Behavior that compounds through return, not reach. A business that gets stronger because people do something, not just consume.

The question for brands

The interesting question for brands isn't "Should we add a game?"

It's this: What's the smallest recurring interaction in your experience that could give people a reason to come back tomorrow, not just visit once?

That's the shift a lot of brands are circling right now. Not more content. More reasons to return.