I have a guilty pleasure, and it’s not that I’ve ever rewatched Glee in its entirety (yes, even the awful later seasons), or read an inordinate amount of Harry Potter fan fiction in my life.
My guilty pleasure is playing LinkedIn games.
To answer the obvious question: wait, LinkedIn has games? Yes. In May, LinkedIn launched three logic games via LinkedIn News, as a knock-off version of the New York Times games. There’s the logic game Queens (my favorite), the word game Crossclimb (pretty good), and the word association game Pinpoint (not a great game, but whatever).
LinkedIn is taking the classic tech strategy of seeing what works for another company and then trying to replicate that success, even though it may seem odd to be playing on a professional networking platform. But it’s no surprise that NYT Games has spurred this inspiration. In a way, The New York Times is a gaming company Now — starting in December 2023, users will be able to I spent more time in the NYT Games app than in its news app.
LinkedIn isn’t alone. Everyone has games now: Apple News, Netflix, YouTube — there are so many games we can play. And yet, once I’ve finished my various New York Times puzzles, I still want more. It’s not that I’m dying to play LinkedIn Crossclimb over Connections, but the games are good enough to give me that sweet dopamine rush.
I usually play LinkedIn games during the workday (sorry boss). Sometimes it’s because I’ve gone on LinkedIn to check something or look up a source, but then I remember I can take a few minutes to play a little game. Other times, my mind gets foggy after staring at the same draft of an article for too long, and taking a break to solve a colorful Queens puzzle makes it easier to go back and tackle that Google Doc again.
But it turns out there’s a science to why we love these quick-fire puzzles we play once a day.
I recently spoke with Ryan Douglas, co-founder of DeepWell DTx, whose company is based on the idea that playing video games (in moderation) can have mental health benefits. In some cases, the brief distraction that a game provides can break us out of spirals of negative thinking or help us approach a problem from a new perspective.
“If you’re playing Tetris, for example, you can’t have a big conversation in your head about how terrible you are, how useless you are, what’s going to happen next week and all that,” Douglas told britcommerce.
On a neuroscientific level, Douglas explained that when we play, we activate the limbic system of our brain, which is responsible for managing stress. But even if these stressors are simulated, they cause our brain to become accustomed to overcoming that stress in various ways.
“You start learning at a subconscious level, creating new neural pathways at an accelerated rate and preferentially choosing them at a subconscious level for how you’re going to deal with these problems in the future,” he said. “If you face [a stressor] In this particular environment, you have gained agency. You are in control.”
This doesn’t mean we should all spend our days playing Pokémon: DeepWell’s game-dev tools are approved for therapeutic use in 15-minute doses. Maybe that’s why we’ve become so enamored with games like Wordle, as well as other games from The New York Times (and LinkedIn), which have a finite endgame. You do your one puzzle a day and then move on.
Josh Wardle, the creator of Wordle, spoke to britcommerce about his viral success, before his game was acquired by The New York Times.
“I’m a little wary of apps and games that want you to pay endless attention to them. I worked in Silicon Valley, for example. I know why they do that,” Wardle said. “I think people have an appetite for things that obviously don’t want anything from you.”
Wardle is right, though: of course, my beloved LinkedIn games want something from me: my attention. And, if I’m honest, I’ve spent a lot more time on LinkedIn in the past few months than ever before.
According to LinkedIn’s own data, my behavior is not an anomaly. The company said that since the beginning of July, engagement from new players has grown 20% week over week. LinkedIn has also noticed a strong boost in users starting conversations after playing a game. When you complete a game, you can see which of your contacts have also played, which I assume some people use as an opportunity to network. I don’t, but then again, most of my LinkedIn conversations are just “hi” messages to my friends because for some reason I find that fun.
So, you go on LinkedIn and play like hell… and then, about four minutes later, you’re back on the relentless grind of global capitalism.