I have a guilty pleasure, and it’s not that I just rewatched “Glee” in its entirety (yes, even the awful later seasons), or that I have read an ungodly amount of Harry Potter fan fiction in my time.
My guilty pleasure is that I play the LinkedIn games.
To answer the obvious question: Wait, LinkedIn has games? Yes. In May, LinkedIn launched three puzzles through LinkedIn News, like a knock-off version of New York Times games. There’s the logic puzzle Queens (my favorite), the word game Crossclimb (pretty good), and the word-association game Pinpoint (not a great game, but whatever).
LinkedIn is adopting the classic tech strategy of seeing what works for another company and then trying to replicate that success, even if it might seem odd to play games on a professional networking platform. But it’s no wonder why NYT Games has spurred this inspiration. In a way, The New York Times is a gaming company now — as of December 2023, users spent more time on the NYT Games app than on its news app.
LinkedIn isn’t alone. Everyone has games now. Apple News. Netflix. YouTube. There are so many games for us to indulge in. And yet, once I finish my various New York Times puzzles, I still want more. It’s not like I’m itching to play LinkedIn’s Crossclimb before Connections, but the games are good enough to give me that sweet rush of dopamine.
Usually I play LinkedIn’s games during the workday (sorry to my boss). Sometimes it’s because I’ve gone on LinkedIn to fact-check something or search for a source, but then I remember I can take a few minutes to play a little game. Other times, my mind is scrambled after staring too long at the same draft of an article, and taking a break to solve a colorful Queens puzzle makes it easier to go back and confront that Google Doc again.
But it turns out that there’s a science to why we love these quick, once-a-day brain teasers.
I recently spoke with DeepWell DTx co-founder Ryan Douglas, whose company is predicated on the idea that playing video games (in moderation) can have mental health benefits. In some cases, the brief distraction of a game can pull us out of negative thought spirals or help us approach a problem from a new perspective.
“If you’re playing Tetris, for instance, you can’t have a big conversation in your head about how terrible you are, and how you suck, and what’s going to go on next week, and all that,” Douglas told TechCrunch.
On a neuroscientific level, Douglas explained that when we play games, we activate the limbic system in our brains, which is responsible for navigating stress. But even if these stressors are simulated, they get our brains accustomed to overcoming that stress in a variety of ways.
“You start learning on a subconscious level, creating new neural pathways at an accelerated rate, and choosing them preferentially on a subconscious level for how you’re going to deal with these issues in the future,” he said. “If you cope with [a stressor] in this particular environment, you’ve gained agency. You have control.”
This isn’t to say we should all go and play Pokémon all day — the video game developer tools that DeepWell makes are approved for therapeutic use in 15-minute doses. Maybe that’s why we’ve all become so enamored with games like Wordle, as well as other games from The New York Times (and LinkedIn), which have a finite ending. You do your one puzzle per day and then you move on.
Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, spoke to TechCrunch about his viral success, back before his game was acquired by The New York Times.
“I’m kind of suspicious of apps and games that want your endless attention — like, I worked in Silicon Valley. I know why they do that,” Wardle said. “I think people have an appetite for things that transparently don’t want anything from you.”
Wardle is right, though — of course, my beloved LinkedIn games do want something from me: my attention. And if I’m being honest, I’ve spent way more time on LinkedIn in recent months than I ever have.
According to LinkedIn’s own data, my behavior is not an anomaly. The company said that since the start of July, new player engagement has grown about 20% week over week. LinkedIn has also noticed strong traction in users starting conversations after playing games. When you complete a game, you can see which of your connections have also played, which I guess some people take as an opportunity to #network. I don’t do that, but then again, most of my conversations on LinkedIn are just me messaging my friends “hi,” because for some reason that’s funny to me.
So, get on LinkedIn and play your heart out … and then about four minutes later, get back to the relentless grind of global capitalism.