Why the New York Times is forging connections with gamers as it diversifies its audience

The New York Times has had such notable traffic to its games that some observers have speculated that the newspaper is on its way to becoming a gaming company. While this isn’t quite the case, the Times is clearly building out its games section as part of its audience diversification strategy.

Games have been part of the New York Times’ portfolio ever since the newspaper published its first crossword in 1942. In 2022, the company acquired Wordle to bolster its gaming section, integrating the wildly popular word-guessing game into the NYT Games app alongside other puzzles such as Spelling Bee and Sudoku. In 2023, the Times introduced Connections, which quickly became its second-most-popular game after Wordle. (A New York Times representative declined to comment on this story.)

The New York Times appears to have embraced its role as a gaming destination. In February 2022, the publisher renamed its official gaming Twitter account from NYT Crosswords to NYT Games, a clear acknowledgment of the expansion of the Times’ gaming products. In August 2022, it added Wordle to the NYT Crosswords app. By March 2023, the app had been renamed NYT Games, with NYT head of games Jonathan Knight telling Digiday that Wordle alone had brought “tens of millions” of new users into the Times fold.

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