LinkedIn’s New Daily Games Are Surprisingly Fun to Play

I’m kidding! But I have to admit one thing: I’ve been checking LinkedIn every day recently and I’m having a lot of fun. Last week, the company announced that it was adding three games to its app, both for desktop and mobile, as an engagement strategy to get you opening the app every day. I hate to say it, but it’s working.

The three games are called Identify, Cross climbingIt is Queens. Identify It’s basically The New York Times‘ Categories game, but in reverse: the game gives you items and you have to guess the category. Cross climbing it’s like the Times‘mini crossword, with a difference in that you need to rearrange the answers into a word ladder. AND Queensmy favorite of the three games – and probably the hardest too – is a sort of Minefield-y, do a sudoku in which you must place a queen in each row, column and color without overlapping. (It’s remarkable, and almost shameful, how closely LinkedIn follows the Times‘ Formula. Give it a few weeks and I’m sure there will be a twist Word and a complete crossword here somewhere.)

You can play all three games in about 10 minutes, and they scratch exactly the same daily itch as the Times‘the game cycle does. None of them are really difficult, although there have been days when the Identify categories seem particularly esoteric or my pre-coffee brain just can’t cope Queens. But before I knew it, I was back to three games every day.

Don’t I love that my morning routine now involves opening LinkedIn – there is a direct link This takes you straight to the games, which helps – but it’s a very smart move for the company. O Times‘the gamble on gaming paid off: the company’s chief product officer, Alex Hardiman, counted Vanity Fair last year that “a lot of people are actually buying the bundle through our Games product.” (What Vanity Fair The story also references a joke you hear a lot in the media these days: that the Times is a cooking and crossword company with a side hustle in news.) Times I just opened the Word file, giving people even more things to play, and said the game is still played by “tens of millions of players every week.” Give people a fun, replayable game with a leaderboard and streak tracker, and they’ll come back.

Keeping people coming back is crucial for LinkedIn, which is trying to become more than just “the place you go to look for a job.” The Microsoft-owned company really wants to be a full-fledged social network: It tried to be more like TikTok, it grew into live audio in that brief moment when everyone liked live audio, it tried to make LinkedIn Stories a thing, and continues to shift the product around posts and news feeds rather than just boring old job listings.

It’s all a bit cringeworthy, but it’s working. Microsoft reported in April that LinkedIn revenue increased 10% year over year, and CEO Satya Nadella said engagement on LinkedIn reached a record level last quarter. If getting people to play games and network with semi-random connections about their scores keeps people on LinkedIn longer, you can bet there will be more. And so there will probably be some weird things about recruiters passing people off based on their Cross climbing punctuation. I don’t know, it’s going to be weird. It’s LinkedIn.

So, begrudgingly, congratulations to LinkedIn for hooking me. I only have one request: can’t we all do the same and share our scores? These colorful blocks were a big part of how Word It went viral, but no one needs it. Especially not on LinkedIn. I have broetria to read.