Before “What I learned about B2B sales while playing Crossclimb,” how long will it be?
The professional network LinkedIn, which is well-known for its job postings and unsolicited career advice, is now planning to enter the gaming industry. After being discovered in the app for the first time a few weeks ago, the platform is now officially launching a collection of puzzle games that are modeled after Wordle.
The company is beginning with three games: Pinpoint, a word game in which players are required to guess the theme that ties a series of words together; Queens, a puzzle game that is somewhat similar to a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper; and Crossclimb, a trivia game in which players are required to guess a series of four-letter words and place them in the correct order.
LinkedIn refers to them as “thinking-oriented games,” but the format is likely to be recognizable to those who have used The New York Times Games app in the past. Every game can only be played once per day, and players can communicate with their friends about their score through adorable messages that are loaded with emojis and are reminiscent of the “Wordle grid.” Additionally, the service will keep track of “streaks,” which are designed to motivate players to return on a daily basis. Given the parallels, it should not come as a surprise that games were produced by the news team at LinkedIn, which had recently employed a games editor specifically for the purpose of development.
Since The New York Times purchased Wordle in 2022, games have been a windfall for the publication. Other publications have attempted to replicate the success of The New York Times by developing their own word and puzzle games on their own products. Dan Roth, the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn and the vice president of product, was questioned if the company was motivated by the success of Wordle and the Games app developed by the New York Times. He stated that the source of inspiration was actually far older: “the very first crossword puzzle” that was published in the New York World newspaper; this puzzle was published more than a century ago. He went on to say that there are no plans in place for a standalone gaming application at this time.
In an interview with Engadget, Roth stated that “these games are not designed to be just played.” Our intention is not to enter the gaming world for the sole purpose of entering the gaming world. The objective is to play games that provide you with the opportunity to connect with your network and think in a different way.
The new games are available for you to test out on LinkedIn.