The NYT Games blueprint

• Business Insider and Time are the latest media publishers to build gaming platforms.
• BI Games features four puzzles, including Pipeline and Boxed. It's also adding game-like mechanics to other website features.
• Time Games has a mix of puzzle, word and news-based games.
• NYT Games looks to be on a $100m run-rate for the year from mobile app subscriptions alone.

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The success of The New York Times Games platform is rubbing off. In the past couple of weeks, Business Insider has launched daily puzzle platform BI Games and Time has launched its own set of daily digital games with the aptly named Time Games.

BI Games features four puzzles, including Pipeline, which tasks players with matching colours without crossing paths, and Boxed, which challenges users to fill a grid using rectangles that match clue numbers.

You can play the games for free, but when you complete one, you’re encouraged to create a Business Insider account to track your progress. Interestingly, the publisher is adding game-like mechanics to other parts of its website. For example, Level Up turns the platform’s reporting into Action Packs, effectively a tracker for personal goals, and adds weekly streaks for completing tasks.

Time Games is a bit more light touch and is less aggressive in pushing players to subscriptions, but it feeds into the publisher’s news coverage and encourages users to engage with the wider platform. Market Movers is a fantasy prediction market game where players test their knowledge of current events and markets. There are also puzzle games like word connection puzzle Linked and word game Word Flower - just like NYT Games’ Spelling Bee.

Time COO Mark Howard called its games hub a way of “building a daily habit with our audience, meeting them where they already are, and giving them something personal, playful, and distinctly Time to return to”.

Google face-off

Games are an interesting way to attract potential readers and keep users engaged and coming back. Media has a tough time battling with Google Search, particularly as the firm continues to use AI tech to turn its search engine into a destination, rather than a conduit for the rest of the internet. The media can’t make money if people don’t visit the actual website.

It’s also challenging to get people to pay for their media consumption. NYT Games has been successful in building a new money maker that also taps into its main news business. You can access some games for free, like Wordle and Connections, every day. Or you can subscribe to games-only to get access to the full suite. But if you check the site, you’re pushed to subscribe to the entire platform, which, of course, features news reporting.

AppMagic estimates show that its mobile app generated around $69 million from gross player spending on the App Store and Google Play - all subscription-based. It’s already hit just over $24m in the first four months of 2026 - potentially putting it on a $100m run-rate this year from mobile app spending alone. There’s a lot that games companies could learn from how NYT has racked up subscriptions.

Games have been so successful for The New York Times that it also launched a separate app, NYT Crossplay, a scrabble-like game that ambitiously takes on the likes of Scopely’s Scrabble Go and Zynga’s Words With Friends.

Time and Business Insider are the latest examples of how everything is a games platform - check out last year’s analysis of that trend here. There’s a battle for our time in the digital space, and it’s heating up every day.

Gain insights into non-gaming app and monetisation trends at one of our many worldwide Pocket Gamer Connects conferences, such as PGC Barcelona on June 15th to 16th, where we'll be hosting the Apps x Games track. Newsletter readers can get a 10% discount on tickets.